Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Center for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 2, Singapore 117543, Singapore.
Science. 2017 Jul 28;357(6349):372-375. doi: 10.1126/science.aal5066.
Coherence, the stability of the relative phase between quantum states, is central to quantum mechanics and its applications. For ultracold dipolar molecules at sub-microkelvin temperatures, internal states with robust coherence are predicted to offer rich prospects for quantum many-body physics and quantum information processing. We report the observation of stable coherence between nuclear spin states of ultracold fermionic sodium-potassium (NaK) molecules in the singlet rovibrational ground state. Ramsey spectroscopy reveals coherence times on the scale of 1 second; this enables high-resolution spectroscopy of the molecular gas. Collisional shifts are shown to be absent down to the 100-millihertz level. This work opens the door to the use of molecules as a versatile quantum memory and for precision measurements on dipolar quantum matter.
相干性,即量子态之间相对相位的稳定性,是量子力学及其应用的核心。对于亚微开尔文温度下的超冷偶极分子,预测具有稳健相干性的内部状态将为量子多体物理和量子信息处理提供丰富的前景。我们报告了在单重态转动振动基态中超冷费米子钠钾(NaK)分子的核自旋态之间稳定相干性的观测。拉姆齐光谱学揭示了在 1 秒量级的相干时间;这使得分子气体的高分辨率光谱成为可能。已经证明,在 100 毫赫兹的水平下不存在碰撞位移。这项工作为使用分子作为通用量子存储器以及对偶极量子物质进行精密测量开辟了道路。