Seminar
Tuesday, 22 June, 2010
Gauge fields for ultracold Ytterbium atoms
Tuesday, 22.06.2010 ~11 a.m. in Herbert-Walther-lecture room, MPQ Garching
Sebastian Krinner, Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, ENS Paris
Cold atoms in optical lattices can serve as model systems for condensed matter physics. As the interaction among the captured atoms can be freely tuned via Feshbach resonances, these systems present a versatile tool to study complex many-body quantum phenomena. This leads to the idea of quantum simulators, i.e. devices that allow for the control and manipulation of quantum systems with high precision in order to emulate quantum effects, such as the Mott-Hubbard metal-insulator transition or the quantum Hall effect, that originally take place in much less accessible regimes.
In our project we plan to investigate the rich physics of fractional quantum Hall phases that emerge in two-dimensional electron gases plunged in large magnetic fields. To simulate the magnetic field we propose a realistic scheme that produces a strong U(1)-like gauge field on cold Yb atoms confined in a two-dimensional square lattice [1]. More precisely, the effective magnetic field is created by laser-assisted tunneling between adjacent lattice sites, as first proposed by Jaksch and Zoller [2]. After presenting the basic principles of our scheme [1] i will describe the first steps of the development of our new experimental setup for manipulating ultracold ytterbium gases.
[1] Fabrice Gerbier and Jean Dalibard. Gauge fields for ultracold atoms in optical superlattices. New Journal of Physics, 12(3):033007, March 2010.
[2] D. Jaksch and P. Zoller. Creation of effective magnetic fields in optical lattices: the Hofstadter butterfly for cold neutral atoms. New Journal of Physics, 5:56.1-56.11, May 2003.