Light-induced gauge fields for ultracold atoms.

Gauge fields are central in our modern understanding of physics at all scales. At the highest energy scales known, the microscopic universe is governed by particles interacting with each other through the exchange of gauge bosons. At the largest length scales, our Universe is ruled by gravity, whose gauge structure suggests the existence of a particle-the graviton-that mediates the gravitational force. At the mesoscopic scale, solid-state systems are subjected to gauge fields of different nature: materials can be immersed in external electromagnetic fields, but they can also feature emerging gauge fields in their low-energy description. In this review, we focus on another kind of gauge field: those engineered in systems of ultracold neutral atoms. In these setups, atoms are suitably coupled to laser fields that generate effective gauge potentials in their description. Neutral atoms 'feeling' laser-induced gauge potentials can potentially mimic the behavior of an electron gas subjected to a magnetic field, but also, the interaction of elementary particles with non-Abelian gauge fields. Here, we review different realized and proposed techniques for creating gauge potentials-both Abelian and non-Abelian-in atomic systems and discuss their implication in the context of quantum simulation. While most of these setups concern the realization of background and classical gauge potentials, we conclude with more exotic proposals where these synthetic fields might be made dynamical, in view of simulating interacting gauge theories with cold atoms.

Simulating an interacting gauge theory with ultracold Bose gases.

We show how density dependent gauge potentials can be induced in dilute gases of ultracold atoms using light-matter interactions. We study the effect of the resulting interacting gauge theory and show how it gives rise to novel topological states in the ultracold gas. We find in particular that the onset of persistent currents in a ring geometry is governed by a critical number of particles. The density-dependent gauge potential is also found to support chiral solitons in a quasi-one-dimensional ultracold Bose gas.

Tunable multiple layered Dirac cones in optical lattices.

We show that multiple layered Dirac cones can emerge in the band structure of properly addressed multicomponent cold fermionic gases in optical lattices. The layered Dirac cones contain multiple copies of massless spin-1/2 Dirac fermions at the same location in momentum space, whose different Fermi velocity can be tuned at will. On-site microwave Raman transitions can further be used to mix the different Dirac species, resulting in either splitting of or preserving the Dirac point (depending on the symmetry of the on-site term). The tunability of the multiple layered Dirac cones allows us to simulate a number of fundamental phenomena in modern physics, such as neutrino oscillations and exotic particle dispersions with E~p(N) for arbitrary integer N.

Chiral confinement in quasirelativistic Bose-Einstein condensates.

In the presence of a laser-induced spin-orbit coupling an interacting ultracold spinor Bose-Einstein condensate may acquire a quasirelativistic character described by a nonlinear Dirac-like equation. We show that as a result of the spin-orbit coupling and the nonlinearity the condensate may become self-trapped, resembling the so-called chiral confinement, previously studied in the context of the massive Thirring model. We first consider 1D geometries where the self-confined condensates present an intriguing sinusoidal dependence on the interparticle interactions. We further show that multidimensional chiral confinement is also possible under appropriate feasible laser arrangements, and discuss the properties of 2D and 3D condensates, which differ significantly from the 1D case.

Optical ferris wheel for ultracold atoms.

We propose a versatile optical ring lattice suitable for trapping cold and quantum degenerate atomic samples. We demonstrate the realisation of intensity patterns from pairs of Laguerre-Gauss (exp(i??) modes with different ? indices. These patterns can be rotated by introducing a frequency shift between the modes. We can generate bright ring lattices for trapping atoms in red-detuned light, and dark ring lattices suitable for trapping atoms with minimal heating in the optical vortices of blue-detuned light. The lattice sites can be joined to form a uniform ring trap, making it ideal for studying persistent currents and the Mott insulator transition in a ring geometry.

Non-Abelian gauge potentials for ultracold atoms with degenerate dark states.

We show that the adiabatic motion of ultracold, multilevel atoms in spatially varying laser fields can give rise to effective non-Abelian gauge fields if degenerate adiabatic eigenstates of the atom-laser interaction exist. A pair of such degenerate dark states emerges, e.g., if laser fields couple three internal states of an atom to a fourth common one under pairwise two-photon-resonance conditions. For this so-called tripod scheme we derive general conditions for truly non-Abelian gauge potentials and discuss special examples. In particular we show that using orthogonal laser beams with orbital angular momentum an effective magnetic field can be generated that has a monopole component.

Dark solitons in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate.

The creation and interaction of dark solitons in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate is investigated. For a miscible case, the interaction of dark solitons in different components is studied. Various possible scenarios are presented, including the formation of a soliton-soliton bound pair. We also analyze the soliton propagation in the presence of domains, and show that a dark soliton can be transferred from one component to the other at the domain wall when it exceeds a critical velocity. For lower velocities multiple reflections within the domain are observed, where the soliton is evaporated and accelerated after each reflection until it finally escapes from the domain.

Dynamical transition from a quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate to a Tonks-Girardeau gas.

We analyze in detail the expansion of a 1D Bose gas after removing the axial confinement. We show that during its one-dimensional expansion the density of the Bose gas does not follow a self-similar solution. Our analysis is based on a nonlinear Schrödinger equation with variable nonlinearity whose validity is discussed for the expansion problem, by comparing with an exact Bose-Fermi mapping for the case of an initial Tonks-Girardeau gas. For this case, the gas is shown to expand self-similarly, with a different scaling law compared to the one-dimensional Thomas-Fermi condensate.

Slow light in degenerate fermi gases.

We investigate the effect of slow light propagating in a degenerate atomic Fermi gas. In particular we use slow light with an orbital angular momentum. We present a microscopic theory for the interplay between light and matter and show how the slow light can provide an effective magnetic field acting on the electrically neutral fermions, a direct analogy of the free electron gas in an uniform magnetic field. As an example we illustrate how the corresponding de Haas-van Alphen effect can be seen in a gas of neutral atomic fermions.