S. Kelly of the JQI did a very nice writeup with awesome artwork for Lindsay’s Zitterbewegung paper as follows: In “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (JK Rowling, 1997), Harry, Ron, and Hermione encounter a massive stone chessboard, one of many …
We present a new technique for producing two- and three-dimensional Rashba-type spin-orbit couplings for ultracold atoms without involving light. The method relies on a sequence of pulsed inhomogeneous magnetic fields imprinting suitable phase gradients on the atoms. For sufficiently short …
Magnetically Generated Spin-Orbit Coupling for Ultracold Atoms Read more »
Third year review on Oct. 9-10 the atomtronics MURI, and like with last year the review will be a 1.5 day event. Approximate times: starting at 1:00 PM on the 9th, and ending at 5PM on the 10th. The location …
Ultracold gases of interacting spin-orbit-coupled fermions are predicted to display exotic phenomena such as topological superfluidity and its associated Majorana fermions. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a route to strongly interacting single-component atomic Fermi gases by combining an s-wave Feshbach resonance (giving …
We investigate the properties of an atom under the influence of a synthetic three-dimensional spin–orbit coupling (Weyl coupling) in the presence of a harmonic trap. The conservation of total angular momentum provides a numerically efficient scheme for finding the spectrum …
Creating and measuring topological matter – with non-local order deeply embedded in the global structure of its quantum mechanical eigenstates – presents unique experimental challenges. Since this order has no signature in local correlation functions, it might seem experimentally inaccessible …
Review article: Detection of topological matter with quantum gases Read more »
Solitons—solitary waves that maintain their shape as they propagate—occur as water waves in narrow canals, as light pulses in optical fibres and as quantum mechanical matter waves in superfluids and superconductors. Their highly nonlinear and localized nature makes them very …
We all wish Lindsay the best as she moves on to her new Assistant Professor position at the University of Alberta, Edmonton! In her time in the group, Linsday lead two fantastically successful experiments, first measuring the Hall effect in a …
Lindsay LeBlanc starts at the University of Alberta, Edmonton Read more »
Zitterbewegung, a force-free trembling motion first predicted for relativistic fermions like electrons, was an unexpected consequence of the Dirac equation’s unification of quantum mechanics and special relativity. Though the oscillatory motion’s large frequency and small amplitude have precluded its measurement with electrons, zitterbewegung is …
Direct observation of zitterbewegung in a Bose–Einstein condensate Read more »
Citation: For innovative and pioneering work in quantum phenomena at the intersection of atomic and condensed matter physics, using quantum simulation with ultracold atoms, including the use of optical interactions to create artificial electromagnetic fields and spin-orbit coupling.