Thermometry and Refrigeration in a Two-Component Mott Insulator of Ultracold Atoms

Interesting spin Hamiltonians can be realized with ultracold atoms in a two-component Mott insulator (2CMI) [Adv. Phys. 56, 243 (2007); Rev. Mod. Phys. 80, 885 (2008)]. It was recently demonstrated that the application of a magnetic field gradient to the 2CMI enables new techniques of thermometry [P...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Weld, David M., Miyake, Hirokazu, Medley, Patrick M., Pritchard, David E., Ketterle, Wolfgang
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Physical Society 2011
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/61678
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5697-1496
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9528-3044
Description
Summary:Interesting spin Hamiltonians can be realized with ultracold atoms in a two-component Mott insulator (2CMI) [Adv. Phys. 56, 243 (2007); Rev. Mod. Phys. 80, 885 (2008)]. It was recently demonstrated that the application of a magnetic field gradient to the 2CMI enables new techniques of thermometry [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 245301 (2009)] and adiabatic cooling [e-print arXiv:1006.4674]. Here we present a theoretical description which provides quantitative analysis of these two techniques. We show that adiabatic reduction of the field gradient is capable of cooling below the Curie or Néel temperature of certain spin-ordered phases.