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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 35: Poster 2

Q 35.17: Poster

Mittwoch, 14. März 2012, 16:30–19:00, Poster.I+II

An experiment for the study of artificial gauge fields with ultracold ytterbium atoms — •Matthias Scholl, Alexandre Dareau, Daniel Döring, Jérôme Beugnon, Jean Dalibard, and Fabrice Gerbier — Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

I will present an experiment aiming at realizing artificial gauge fields for ultracold neutral atoms in an optical lattice. Combining intense gauge fields with strong on-site interactions should allow to explore atomic analogs of fractional quantum Hall systems [1]. Moreover, the scheme can be extended to realize non-Abelian gauge fields [2].

We have chosen Ytterbium (Yb) as the atomic species for our experiment. The metastable state 3P0 (lifetime 16s) allows the implementation of a two-dimensional optical lattice, where the ground and excited states arrange in spatially separated sublattices. Optical coupling of the two states enables tunneling between the sublattices, imprinting the laser phase on the atomic wavefunction. The resulting geometrical phase felt by the atoms is equivalent to the Aharonov-Bohm phase of a charged particle in a magnetic field. The availability of fermionic and bosonic isotopes makes Yb a well-suited choice.

I will present the first results of an apparatus to produce degenerate Ytterbium quantum gases and describe the experimental techniques to implement laser-induced vector potentials.

[1] Sorensen et al.,Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 086803 (2005)

[2] Osterloh et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 010403 (2005)

[3] Jaksch and Zoller, New J. Phys. 5 56 (2003)