Seminar
Friday, 24 February, 2012
Seminar MPQ: Light-induced gauge potentials for ultra cold atoms
Tuesday, 24.02.2012 11:00 a.m. (s.t.) in Herbert-Walther-lecture room, MPQ Garching
Prof. Gediminas Juzeliūnas, Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy, Vilnius University, Lithuania
Currently there is a great deal of interest in creating an artificial magnetic field for ultra cold atoms using the geometric gauge potentials. The coupling with light fields modifies the atomic internal states making them position dependant. This provides geometric vector and scalar potentials. The method can generate a non-zero effective magnetic field for non-trivial spatial arrangements of the laser fields and/or position-dependent detuning of the atom-light coupling.
In the initial part of the talk we shall review schemes enabling to produce an artificial magnetic field for cold atoms using several light beams. We discuss possibilities to create both Abelian and also non-Abelian gauge potentials. Subsequently we shall talk about the optical flux lattices and present a novel scheme simulating a spin-orbit coupling of the Rashba-Dresselhaus (RD) type for ultra cold atoms.