Direct measurement of Tan's contact in a one-dimensional Lieb-Liniger gas.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41042887.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.adv3727 and PMC identifier 12494025.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The Tan contact is a pivotal quantity for characterizing many-body quantum systems, bridging microscopic correlations to macroscopic thermodynamic behavior. It is defined as the weight of universal [Formula: see text] momentum tails, but, so far, its direct measurement has been hindered in Bose gases due to interactions strongly altering time-of-flight imaging. Here, we report the first direct measurement of the Tan contact in a strongly correlated Lieb-Liniger gas. Leveraging the one-dimensional geometry of our system, we implement a two-stage expansion scheme, yielding interaction-immune imaging. Our results show good agreement with theoretical predictions and are consistent with a predicted universal scaling law. Our work paves the way for further characterization of the Lieb-Liniger gas across broad interaction regimes and holds promise for extension to other correlated quantum gases in confined geometries.