Karina and Neil: Married!
Much of the old RbII team traveled to San Crístobal de las Casas, Mexico to attend the wedding of Karina (the happy one on the left) and Neil (the lucky one on the right), formerly of the RbII team (Karina) …
Category: Group News
Zitterbewegung: JQI writeup
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 …
Magnetically Generated Spin-Orbit Coupling for Ultracold Atoms
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 »
Raman-Induced Interactions in a Single-Component Fermi Gas Near an s-Wave Feshbach Resonance
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 …
Review article: Detection of topological matter with quantum gases
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 »
Lindsay LeBlanc starts at the University of Alberta, Edmonton
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 »
Direct observation of zitterbewegung in a Bose–Einstein condensate
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 »
Ian elected a fellows of the APS
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.
Karina Jimenéz-García is a finalist for the 2013 DAMOP thesis prize!
We are delighted and proud that Karina has been selected as a finalist for the 2013 DAMOP thesis prize! Karina (remotely) presented her thesis research in the special Prize Session at DAMOP this year.
The spin Hall effect in a quantum gas
Electronic properties such as current flow are generally independent of the electron’s spin angular momentum, an internal degree of freedom possessed by quantum particles. The spin Hall effect, first proposed 40 years ago, is an unusual class of phenomena in …