A Quantum Simulator

This book presents the full setup from scratch of a novel experiment that aims at cooling down and manipulating two fermionic alkaline atomic species, lithium 6 and potassium 40. The goal of this complex machine is to allow for the study of ultracold Fermi mixtures with mass imbalance, and thus to realize a flexible quantum analog simulator. In fact, for certain quantum many-body problems, such as high critical temperature superconductivity and frustrated Néel anti-ferromagnetism, there is neither complete analytical nor numerical solution. Therefore, cold atoms systems, due to their purity and their high degree of tunability, even on the atomic interaction itself, offer an interesting and complementary point of view in the study of those phenomena. Several modern techniques such as Doppler cooling, Zeeman slowing, Magneto-optical trapping, photoassociation, magnetic trapping, magnetic transport, evaporative cooling, optically plugged magnetic trapping, and optical trapping are described in detail, and their performances in the considered experiment are fully characterized. Therefore, this book will be a useful tool for scientists building and using such experiments in the world.