Exploring quantum magnetism in a chromium Bose-Einstein condensate

Magnetic dipole-dipole interactions (MDDIs) are long-ranged and anisotropic. They induce a coupling between spin and angular momentum degrees of freedom paving the way for new interesting physics in the fields of quantum gases and magnetism. This paper thoroughly studies dipolar relaxation (DR) processes in a chromium BEC. Atoms are transferred from the absolute ground state with m = -3 to the excited m = +3 Zeeman state and are loaded in a 3D optical lattice; the magnetic state distribution of this system under various conditions is monitored. In a previous publication, it was demonstrated how the confinement of a quantum gas in 1D and 2D optical lattices deeply modifies the DR processes. In particular, it was shown that DR is inhibited at low magnetic fields when the released energy becomes smaller than the vibrational quantum of energy at the bottom of the lattice wells. In the present work, instability (or decay) of the “excited state BEC” appears as a resonant process as the released energy matches band excitation. Analyzing these resonances as a function of the magnetic field orientation reveals a new manifestation of the anisotropy of MDDIs. The spectroscopy of these resonances as a function of the field intensity is found to be sensitive to the lattice site number occupancy as demonstrated by performing it after various system preparation schemes including number-squeezed Mott states. Decays from sites housing three atoms produce entangled spin and orbital states.