Observation of Spin-Spin Fermion-Mediated Interactions between Ultracold Bosons


  Hagai Edri  ,  Boaz Raz  ,  Noam Matzliah  ,  Nir Davidson  ,  Roee Ozeri  
Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

In a mixture of a condensed Bose gas (BEC) and spin polarized degenerate Fermi gas (DFG), fermions can mediate collisions between bosons, leading to an effective long-range interaction between the bosons, analogous to Ruderman–Kittel–Kasuya–Yosida (RKKY) interaction in solids. Using Ramsey scheme spectroscopy, we measured frequency shifts of the bosons' hyperfine levels due to interactions with fermions. We were able to isolate the frequency shift related to mediated interaction from shifts caused by direct collision of fermions and bosons. Our measurement showed an increase of spin-spin interaction between bosons by a factor of η = 1.43±0.06stat±0.17sys in the presence of the DFG, providing a clear evidence of spin-spin fermion mediated interaction. Fermion mediated interactions can potentially give rise to interesting new magnetic phases and extend the Bose-Hubbard model when the atoms are placed in an optical lattice. This interaction can be tuned with a boson-fermion Feshbach resonance.