A programmable Fermi-Hubbard tweezer array

Over the past few years, fermionic quantum gas microscopes have been used to explore equilibrium and dynamical properties of the Fermi-Hubbard model. However, these studies have been limited by high entropies per particle, which has prevented exploration of both certain low temperature phases of interest and dynamics with controlled initial states. Here we present a new platform to reach record low entropies with a one-dimensional lattice system formed by optical tweezers. Building on the work of [1], we load a degenerate Fermi gas of atoms into an array of four tweezers, creating a band insulator with entropies $<= 0.1 k_b$ per particle, around four times lower than the previous record [2]. We adiabatically introduce four additional empty tweezers and allow for tunneling to create a low entropy correlated state at half filling. We obtain single-site readout by loading the tweezers into an optical lattice quantum gas microscope and subsequently imaging. By generating tweezers with multiple acousto-optical modulators or a spatial light modulator, we plan to expand to a two-dimensional array with hundreds of atoms. In addition to studying lower temperature Fermi-Hubbard physics, with this platform we will be able to study Hamiltonians with flexible geometries and single-site control.

[1] Serwane et al. Science 332, 336 (2011)

[2] Mazurenko et al. Nature 545, 462 (2017)