Tuning the Dipole-Dipole Interaction in a Quantum Gas with a Rotating Magnetic Field

Abstract

We demonstrate the tuning of the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction (DDI) within a dysprosium Bose-Einstein condensate by rapidly rotating the orientation of the atomic dipoles. The tunability of the dipolar mean-field energy manifests as a modified gas aspect ratio after time-of-flight expansion. We demonstrate that both the magnitude and the sign of the DDI can be tuned using this technique. In particular, we show that a magic rotation angle exists at which the mean-field DDI can be eliminated, and at this angle, we observe that the expansion dynamics of the condensate is close to that predicted for a nondipolar gas. The ability to tune the strength of the DDI opens new avenues toward the creation of exotic soliton and vortex states as well as unusual quantum lattice phases and Weyl superfluids.