Direct measurement of Tan’s contact in a one-dimensional Lieb-Liniger gas
2025-10-03
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 1 / k 4 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.