Erlangen 2018 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 9: Cold atoms II - interactions (joint session A/Q)

Q 9.6: Talk

Monday, March 5, 2018, 11:45–12:00, K 2.019

Polaron physics with ultracold atoms and beyond — •Richard Schmidt — Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA — ITAMP, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, 85748 Garching, Germany

When an impurity interacts with an environment, it changes its properties and forms a polaron. Depending on the character of the environment, various types of polarons are created. In this talk, I will review recent progress on studying the physics of polarons in cold atoms [1], and discuss related phenomena in semiconductors and the study of rotating molecules in Helium droplets [2]. Then I will show that Rydberg excitations coupled to BECs are a new, exciting playground for the study of polaronic physics. Here the impurity-bath interaction is mediated by the Rydberg electron. This gives rise to a new polaronic dressing mechanisms, where molecules of gigantic size dress the Rydberg impurity. We develop a functional determinant approach [3] which incorporates atomic and many-body theory. Using this approach we predict the appearance of a superpolaronic state, recently observed in experiments [4,5].

References: [1] R. Schmidt, et al, arXiv:1702.08587 (2017). [2] R. Schmidt, and M. Lemeshko, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 203001 (2015); [3] R. Schmidt, H. Sadeghpour, and E. Demler, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 105302 (2016). [4] F. Camargo et al., arXiv:1706.03717 (2017). [5] R. Schmidt et al., arXiv:1709.01838 (2017).