TY - JOUR

T1 - Quantum gas mixtures and dual-species atom interferometry in space

AU - Elliott, Ethan R.

AU - Aveline, David C.

AU - Bigelow, Nicholas P.

AU - Boegel, Patrick

AU - Botsi, Sofia

AU - Charron, Eric

AU - D’Incao, José P.

AU - Engels, Peter

AU - Estrampes, Timothé

AU - Gaaloul, Naceur

AU - Kellogg, James R.

AU - Kohel, James M.

AU - Lay, Norman E.

AU - Lundblad, Nathan

AU - Meister, Matthias

AU - Mossman, Maren E.

AU - Müller, Gabriel

AU - Müller, Holger

AU - Oudrhiri, Kamal

AU - Phillips, Leah E.

AU - Pichery, Annie

AU - Rasel, Ernst M.

AU - Sackett, Charles A.

AU - Sbroscia, Matteo

AU - Schleich, Wolfgang P.

AU - Thompson, Robert J.

AU - Williams, Jason R.

N1 - Funding Information: We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of current and former members of CAL’s operations and technical teams and those of the team at ColdQuanta. We also recognize the continuing support of JPL’s Astronomy, Physics, and Space Technology Directorate, of the JPL Communications, Tracking, and Radar Division, the JPL Mission Assurance Office, the Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) cadre at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, the International Space Station Program Office (ISSPO) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and ISS crew members. We are thankful for the dedicated support from the Biological and Physical Sciences Division (BPS) of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Finally, we appreciate the scientific guidance and discussions with CAL Principal Investigator E. Cornell, ISS Chief Scientist K. Costello, BPS Fundamental Physics Program Scientist M. Robinson and JPL Chief Scientist for Astronomy and Physics C. Lawrence. CAL was designed, managed and operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Task Order 80NM0018F0581). CAL and the Principal Investigator-led science teams, including E.R.E, D.C.A, N.P.B, S.B., J.P.D., P.E., J.R.K., J.M.K., N.E.L., N.L., M.E.M., H.M., K.O., L.E.P., C.A.S., M.S., R.J.T., and J.R.W. are sponsored by BPS of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. and by ISSPO at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. N.G., E.M.R., W.P.S., P.B., G.M. and A.P. acknowledge support by the DLR Space Administration with funds provided by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) under grant numbers DLR 50WM2245-A/B (CAL-II) and 50WM2253A (AI-quadrat). N.G. acknowledges support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy (EXC-2123 QuantumFrontiers Grants No. 390837967) and through CRC 1227 (DQ-mat) within Project No. A05. A.P., T.E. and E.C acknowledge support by the “ADI 2019/2022” project funded by the IDEX Paris-Saclay, ANR-11-IDEX-0003-02. HPC resources from the “Mésocentre” computing center of CentraleSupélec, École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay and Université Paris-Saclay was supported by CNRS and Région Île-de-France. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

PY - 2023/11/16

Y1 - 2023/11/16

N2 - The capability to reach ultracold atomic temperatures in compact instruments has recently been extended into space 1,2. Ultracold temperatures amplify quantum effects, whereas free fall allows further cooling and longer interactions time with gravity—the final force without a quantum description. On Earth, these devices have produced macroscopic quantum phenomena such as Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs), superfluidity, and strongly interacting quantum gases 3. Terrestrial quantum sensors interfering the superposition of two ultracold atomic isotopes have tested the universality of free fall (UFF), a core tenet of Einstein’s classical gravitational theory, at the 10−12 level 4. In space, cooling the elements needed to explore the rich physics of strong interactions or perform quantum tests of the UFF has remained elusive. Here, using upgraded hardware of the multiuser Cold Atom Lab (CAL) instrument aboard the International Space Station (ISS), we report, to our knowledge, the first simultaneous production of a dual-species BEC in space (formed from 87Rb and 41K), observation of interspecies interactions, as well as the production of 39K ultracold gases. Operating a single laser at a ‘magic wavelength’ at which Rabi rates of simultaneously applied Bragg pulses are equal, we have further achieved the first spaceborne demonstration of simultaneous atom interferometry with two atomic species (87Rb and 41K). These results are an important step towards quantum tests of UFF in space and will allow scientists to investigate aspects of few-body physics, quantum chemistry and fundamental physics in new regimes without the perturbing asymmetry of gravity.

AB - The capability to reach ultracold atomic temperatures in compact instruments has recently been extended into space 1,2. Ultracold temperatures amplify quantum effects, whereas free fall allows further cooling and longer interactions time with gravity—the final force without a quantum description. On Earth, these devices have produced macroscopic quantum phenomena such as Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs), superfluidity, and strongly interacting quantum gases 3. Terrestrial quantum sensors interfering the superposition of two ultracold atomic isotopes have tested the universality of free fall (UFF), a core tenet of Einstein’s classical gravitational theory, at the 10−12 level 4. In space, cooling the elements needed to explore the rich physics of strong interactions or perform quantum tests of the UFF has remained elusive. Here, using upgraded hardware of the multiuser Cold Atom Lab (CAL) instrument aboard the International Space Station (ISS), we report, to our knowledge, the first simultaneous production of a dual-species BEC in space (formed from 87Rb and 41K), observation of interspecies interactions, as well as the production of 39K ultracold gases. Operating a single laser at a ‘magic wavelength’ at which Rabi rates of simultaneously applied Bragg pulses are equal, we have further achieved the first spaceborne demonstration of simultaneous atom interferometry with two atomic species (87Rb and 41K). These results are an important step towards quantum tests of UFF in space and will allow scientists to investigate aspects of few-body physics, quantum chemistry and fundamental physics in new regimes without the perturbing asymmetry of gravity.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85176805297&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.48550/arXiv.2306.15223

DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2306.15223

M3 - Article

C2 - 37968524

AN - SCOPUS:85176805297

VL - 623

SP - 502

EP - 508

JO - NATURE

JF - NATURE

SN - 0028-0836

ER -