Optical Lattice Immersions for Direct Quantum Simulation

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• Dieter Jaksch (Oxford)
• Monday 18 January 2010, 15:00-16:00
• Physics East 217.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Vincent Boyer.

We describe quantum simulation schemes in which atoms trapped in a static optical lattice are immersed into a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The immersed optical lattice atoms couple to Bogoliubov phonons in the BEC and this gives rise to the formation of polarons. The properties of these polarons like their effective mass, polaron-polaron interactions, self trapping and incoherent polaron motion in a finite temperature BEC can be varied by changing BEC properties. We show that the coupling of the impurity atoms to BEC phonons leads to a cross-over in the transport properties of the atoms from coherent to incoherent motion. The particle current in a tilted lattices follows an Esaki-Tsui relation with negative differential conductivity and the phonon coupling can also been shown to mediate an attractive interaction between impurity atoms causing clustering effects.

We will then show that polaron hopping from one lattice site to the next imprints a phase onto their wave function if the BEC is moving with respect to the optical lattice. For a one-dimensional ring-shaped setup we examine analytically the dependence of the resulting phase twist on BEC ’s angular velocity. The phase twist can be used to create an artificial magnetic field for the impurity atoms. A crucial advantage of this scheme is that the lattice system, where delicate physical effects are to be simulated, is not actually rotating and thus careful balancing of the centrifugal term is not necessary for quantum simulations.

This talk is part of the Cold Atoms series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Bham Talks
• Cold Atoms
• Physics East 217
• What's on in Physics?

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