Direct Observation Of Long-range Many-body Coherence In Quasi-one-dimensional Attractive Bose Gases

Author

• Hikaru Tamura
• Sambit Banerjee
• Rongjie Li
• Panayotis G. Kevrekidis
• Simeon I. Mistakidis, Missouri University of Science and TechnologyFollow
• Chen Lung Hung

Abstract

Macroscopic coherence is an important feature of quantum many-body systems exhibiting collective behaviors, with examples ranging from atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, and quantum liquids to superconductors. Probing many-body coherence in a dynamically unstable regime, however, presents an intriguing and outstanding challenge in out-of-equilibrium quantum many-body physics. Here, we experimentally study the first- and second-order coherence of degenerate quasi-one-dimensional (1D) Bose gases quenched from repulsive to modulationally unstable attractive interaction regimes. The resulting dynamics, monitored by in situ density and matter-wave interference imaging, reveals phase-coherent density wave evolutions, clearly distinguished from iconic soliton trains previously observed in attractive gases. This arises from the interplay between noise-amplified density modulations and dispersive shock waves of broad interest in nonlinear physics, plasmas, granular systems, and beyond. At longer times, the gases become phase-scrambled, exhibiting a finite correlation length. Interestingly, following an interaction quench back to the repulsive regime, we observe that quasi-long-range coherence can be spontaneously re-established. This captivating rephasing dynamics can be attributed to the nucleation and annihilation of density defects in the quasi-1D geometry. These results shed light on out-of-equilibrium phase coherence in quantum many-body systems in a regime where beyond mean-field effects may arise and theoretical approaches have not been well-established.

Recommended Citation

H. Tamura et al., "Direct Observation Of Long-range Many-body Coherence In Quasi-one-dimensional Attractive Bose Gases," Nature Communications, vol. 17, no. 1, article no. 8045, Nature Research, Dec 2026.

The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-74763-w

Department(s)

Physics

Publication Status

Open Access

Comments

W. M. Keck Foundation, Grant PHY-2110030

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

2041-1723

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2026 The Authors, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publication Date

01 Dec 2026

PubMed ID

42365003