Periodically-Kicked Strongly-Interacting Fermions

Periodically driven quantum systems can exhibit a variety of interesting out-of-equilibrium phases and transport properties. Ultracold atoms form a flexible platform for understanding and control of such Floquet systems. In particular, the role of interactions in the phenomenon of dynamical localization of periodically kicked systems has been recently investigated both theoretically [1,2] and experimentally [3,4,5,6]. Dynamical localization in these "quantum kicked rotor” (QKR) systems is the equivalent of Anderson localization in momentum space, and these experiments shed light on the interplay of disorder and interactions in quantum transport. They also simulate an area of many-body quantum physics which is classically chaotic, since the kicked rotor is a paradigm for studies of chaos [7]. Using kicked bosonic gases, work in our group [3,4] and Cao et al. [5] observed many-body dynamical delocalization in the weakly-interacting 1D and strongly-interacting 3D regimes, while Guo et al. [6] observed many-body dynamical localization in the strongly-interacting 1D (Tonks gas) regime. We will report on work towards probing the transition from delocalized to localized phases in 1D QKR systems using composite bosons formed of paired fermions of 6Li atoms with tunable interactions. This system is stable against 3-body losses in the strongly-interacting regime allowing a deeper access into the Tonks regime compared to atomic bosons. Furthermore, the paired system possesses an inherent additional timescale corresponding to the binding energy which can open up a richer many-body phase diagram.

[1]: S. Lellouch et al. PRA 101 043624 (2020)

[2]: C. Rylands et al. PRL 124 155302 (2020)

[3]: J. See Toh et al. Nature Physics 18 1297 (2022)

[4]: J. See Toh et al. arXiv 2305.14817 (2023)

[5]: A. Cao et al. Nature Physics 18 1302 (2022)

[6]: Y. Guo et al. arXiv 2312.13880 (2023)

[7]: D. Shepelyansky et al. PRE 67 046220 (2003)