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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 57: Poster 3: Quantengase, Ultrakalte Atome, Ultrakalte Moleküle, Materiewellen Optik, Präzisionsmessungen, Metrologie
Q 57.22: Poster
Thursday, March 17, 2011, 16:30–19:30, P1
Non-abelian Gauge-field simulators with cold atoms — •Naceur Gaaloul1, Torben Schulze1, Holger Ahlers1, Sebastian Bode1, Felix Kösel1, Vyacheslav Lebedev1, Wolfgang Ertmer1, Luis Santos2, and Ernst Rasel1 — 1Institut für Quantenoptik, LU Hannover — 2Institut für Theoretische Physik, LU Hannover
The study of strongly correlated regimes using cold-atom systems is a long-standing challenge for physicists. The charge neutrality of the atoms and the consequent absence of a Lorentz force are strong limitations to this end. The experimental realization of rotating degenerate quantum gases demonstrated the potential of atomic systems to simulate charged particles subject to a uniform magnetic field. However, due to centrifugal forces and technical issues this method turned out to be of limited use. Recently, several proposals showed that preparing coherent superpositions of Zeeman sub-states of atoms which evolve adiabatically in a laser field could drive the matter wave to acquire a Berry phase. This phase translates into a non-vanishing synthetic magnetic field which could be used to engineer a Lorentz force-like for atoms. We present a practical scheme where atomic populations of a degenerate spinor system are driven by appropriate laser arrangements leading to the appearance of gauge field structures. The use of realistic parameters and atomic spectral data make of this method a receipt to implement quantum simulators of gauge fields including the general class of non-abelian (non-commutative) gauges, so far never observed for atoms.