Realization of highly isolated stable few-spin systems based on alkaline-earth fermions

Abstract

Few-level systems consisting of a certain number of spin states have provided the basis of a wide range of cold atom researches. However, more developments are still needed for better preparation of isolated few-spin systems. In this work, we demonstrate a highly nonlinear spin-discriminating (HNSD) method for isolating an arbitrary few-level manifold out of a larger total number of spin ground states in fermionic alkaline-earth atoms. With this method, we realize large and tunable energy shifts for unwanted spin states while inducing negligible shifts for the spin states of interest, which leads to a highly isolated few-spin system under minimal perturbation. Furthermore, the isolated few-spin system exhibits a long lifetime on the hundred-millisecond scale. Using the HNSD method, we demonstrate a characteristic Rabi oscillation between the two states of an isolated two-spin Fermi gas. Our method has wide applicability for realizing long-lived two-spin or high-spin quantum systems based on alkaline-earth fermions.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

few-spin system / alkaline-earth atoms / ultracold Fermi gas / a.c. Stark shift / long-lived quantum system

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Declarations

The authors declare that they have no competing interests and there are no conflicts.

Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Murray Barrett for very insightful discussions. We thank Meng Khoon Tey, Li-Yang Xie, Bo-Yang Wang, Yu-Dong Wei, Biao Wu, Shina Tan, Yige Lin, Xiaoji Zhou for discussion and technical support. This work was supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Priority Research Program under Grant No. XDB35020100, the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant No. 2018YFA0305601, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 11874073, the Hefei National Laboratory and the Scientific and Technological Innovation 2030 Key Program of Quantum Communication and Quantum Computing under Grant No. 2021ZD0301903. H.Z. and X.Z. conceived the project. W.-W.W., H.Z., C.Q., M.-C.L., R.W. performed the experiments. C.Q., H.Z., W.-W.W. performed the numerical computations. All authors contributed to the data analysis and the writing of this manuscript.

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