Past Event: Physics Club - Nir Navon - Yale University

Thinking Inside the Box: Quantum Many-Body Frontiers with Ultracold Fermions

Recent progress in the control of complex quantum systems have made it possible to revisit long-standing questions, realize thought experiments once deemed inaccessible, and explore new terrain. Our contribution to this progress has been the development of an experimental platform that creates ultracold quantum fluids in spatiotemporally programmable optical potentials, engineered with advanced electro-optic devices.

In this talk, I will share a series of explorations into the physics of fermions confined in ‘boxes of light’, a deceptively simple stage that gives rise to remarkably rich behavior [1]. Highlights include few-body recombination in multicomponent fermions [2,3], the first observation of the quantum Joule–Thomson effect for fermions [4], strong-drive spectroscopy of Fermi-polaron quasiparticles [5], the first direct observation of the Lindhard response [6], and the observation of the emergence and breakdown of Fermi’s Golden Rule in a strongly interacting quantum system [7]. Together, these studies span a wide range of fields of physics—thermodynamics, few-body physics, quantum impurity problems, and hydrodynamics—showcasing both long-predicted effects finally brought into view and surprising new phenomena.

[1] N. Navon, R.P. Smith, Z. Hadzibabic, Nature Phys. 17, 1334 (2021)
[2] Y. Ji et al., Phys. Lev. Lett 129, 203402 (2022)
[3] G.L. Schumacher et al., arXiv:2301.02237, Nature Comm. in press (2025)
[4] Y. Ji et al., Phys. Lev. Lett 132, 153402 (2024)
[5] F.J. Vivanco*, A. Schuckert*, S. Huang* et al., Nature Phys. 21, 564 (2025)
[6] S. Huang*, Y. Ji* et al., Phys. Rev. X 15, 011074 (2025)
[7] J. Chen et al., arXiv:2502.14867 (2025)

Host: Sarah Demers