Commensurate and incommensurate 1D interacting quantum systems

Quantum-gas microscopes using ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices offer a powerful platform for quantum simulation with single-atom manipulation and detection capabilities. The key to single-site control is programmable light patterns from a digital micromirror device (DMD) that can create arbitrary potential landscapes. In our most recent study, we apply dynamically varying repulsive DMD potentials to deterministically prepare incommensurate 1D systems of interacting bosonic atoms with controllable particle densities.

Starting from a commensurate state with unit filling, the confining potential is dynamically changed to reduce the available sites while retaining the atom number. We study the spatial distribution of the (in)commensurate gases from the weakly interacting to the strongly interacting regime, as well as the atom number variance to characterise our 1D systems. Finally, we probe their response to an external bias field to measure particle mobility.