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Department of Physics

Proposal for a many-body phase microscope

© Christof Weitenberg
Sketch of the many-body interferometer scheme, which gives access to the phase coherence in the quantum many-body system.
In a new article, we propose a many-body phase microscope for accessing the phase coherence in quantum many-body systems in relevant physical systems.

In an international collaboration with Kyoto University and LMU Munich, we have proposed a many-body phase microscope, which gives access to phase information of quantum many-body systems. The scheme is relevant for quantum simulators of ultracold atoms in optical lattices, as we use them in our laboratory, and it is based on the matter-wave microscope, which we introduced earlier. Manipulation in Fourier space of the matter-wave optics allows realizing a many-body interferometer scheme, and the interference contrast reveals the phase coherence in the system. We have worked out schemes for different correlators relevant for detecting important states of matter such as d-wave superconductors or fractional Chern insulators. The study adds to the versatile toolbox of ultracold atoms as quantum simulator.

The preprint is available here at Weitenberg et al.