IQIM Postdoctoral and Graduate Student Seminar

Special IQIM seminar, hosted by Manuel Endres. Talk will be at noon in 57 W. Bridge

Abstract: Photon-mediated interactions among atoms coupled to an optical cavity are a powerful tool for engineering quantum many-body Hamiltonians. We present direct observations of non-local spin-exchange ("flip-flop") interactions across hundreds of microns in a cloud of rubidium atoms strongly coupled to a single-mode optical cavity. Notably, the strength and sign of the interaction are optically tunable via controlling the power and detuning of a coherent drive field. Because we work within the F=1 spin-1 manifold, we also observe correlated m_F = +/-1 pair creation when initializing from m_F = 0. The optical access afforded by the near-concentric geometry enables imaging of the spatially-dependent dynamics inside the cavity with micron-scale resolution. I will also discuss prospects for generalizing to control the distance-dependence of the interactions.