Lindsay LeBlanc et al‘s result demonstrating Zitterbewegung in a spin-orbit coupled atomic Bose gas has been featured as a “Highlight of 2013” by The New Journal of Physics! Way to go team! Highlights page: http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/page/highlights-of-2013 Article: http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/15/7/073011/article
Resonant absorption imaging is a common technique for detecting the two-dimensional column density of ultracold atom systems. In many cases, the system’s thickness along the imaging direction greatly exceeds the imaging system’s depth of field, making the identification of the …
Optimally focused cold atom systems obtained using density-density correlations Read more »
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 »
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 …
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 »
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 »
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 …
Spin–orbit coupling links a particle’s velocity to its quantum-mechanical spin, and is essential in numerous condensed matter phenomena, including topological insulators and Majorana fermions. In solid-state materials, spin–orbit coupling originates from the movement of electrons in a crystal’s intrinsic electric …
Interactions between particles can be strongly altered by their environment. We demonstrate a technique for modifying interactions between ultracold atoms by dressing the bare atomic states with light, creating an effective interaction of vastly increased range that scatters states of …
Synthetic Partial Waves in Ultracold Atomic Collisions Read more »