Strongly Correlated Quantum Gas Prepared by Direct Laser Cooling

Abstract

© 2019 American Physical Society. We create a one-dimensional strongly correlated quantum gas of Cs133 atoms with attractive interactions by direct laser cooling in 300 ms. After compressing and cooling the optically trapped atoms to the vibrational ground state along two tightly confined directions, the emergence of a non-Gaussian time-of-flight distribution along the third, weakly confined direction reveals that the system enters a quantum degenerate regime. We observe a reduction of two- A nd three-body spatial correlations and infer that the atoms are directly cooled into a highly correlated excited metastable state, known as a super-Tonks-Girardeau gas.