A strontium quantum-gas microscope for Bose- and Fermi-Hubbard quantum simulation

Alkaline-earth atoms offer exciting opportunities for quantum science in optical-lattice experiments. Atomic strontium, in particular, has many desirable properties for quantum simulation, such as its ultra-narrow clock transition, and the fact that it exhibits both bosonic and fermionic isotopes.

Here we present a quantum-gas microscope for ultracold strontium [1]. In our experiment we routinely prepare quantum gases of strontium, and load them into a clock-magic potential consisting of a 2D optical lattice and a light sheet. We successfully perform site-resolved fluorescence imaging using the blue 461-nm transition and simultaneous attractive Sisyphus cooling on the narrow 689-nm transition.

Our system allows us to operate with the bosonic isotope ⁸⁴Sr and realize the Bose-Hubbard model. We can also work with fermionic ⁸⁷Sr, and simulate the SU(N) Fermi-Hubbard model, with N =10, which displays exotic quantum-magnetism states. In this talk I will discuss the status of our setup and our current efforts to introduce an “clock” laser module.

[1] S. Buob et al., “A strontium quantum-gas microscope” arXiv: 2312.14818 (2023)