Artificial gauge potentials for neutral atoms
Abstract
When a neutral atom moves in a properly designed laser field, its center-of-mass motion may mimic the dynamics of a charged particle in a magnetic field, with the emergence of a Lorentz-like force. In this Colloquium we present the physical principles at the basis of this artificial (synthetic) magnetism and relate the corresponding Aharonov-Bohm phase to the Berry's phase that emerges when the atom follows adiabatically one of its dressed states. We also discuss some manifestations of artificial magnetism for a cold quantum gas, in particular in terms of vortex nucleation. We then generalise our analysis to the simulation of non-Abelian gauge potentials and present some striking consequences, such as the emergence of an effective spin-orbit coupling. We address both the case of bulk gases and discrete systems, where atoms are trapped in an optical lattice.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1008.5378,
title = {Artificial gauge potentials for neutral atoms},
author = {Jean Dalibard and Fabrice Gerbier and Gediminas Juzeliūnas and Patrik Öhberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1008.5378},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in Reviews of Modern Physics (Colloquium)