A Bose-Einstein Condensate in a Uniform Light-induced Vector Potential

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates creating a uniform effective vector potential for Bose-Einstein condensates using a two-photon dressing field, enabling simulation of charged particles in magnetic fields with neutral atoms.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate a uniform vector gauge potential in a Bose-Einstein condensate via Raman coupling, extending quantum simulation capabilities.

Findings

Measured effective vector potential strength matches theoretical predictions.

Loaded atoms into the lowest energy dressed state adiabatically.

Technique can be extended to create non-uniform magnetic fields.

Abstract

We use a two-photon dressing field to create an effective vector gauge potential for Bose-condensed Rb atoms in the F=1 hyperfine ground state. The dressed states in this Raman field are spin and momentum superpositions, and we adiabatically load the atoms into the lowest energy dressed state. The effective Hamiltonian of these neutral atoms is like that of charged particles in a uniform magnetic vector potential, whose magnitude is set by the strength and detuning of Raman coupling. The spin and momentum decomposition of the dressed states reveals the strength of the effective vector potential, and our measurements agree quantitatively with a simple single-particle model. While the uniform effective vector potential described here corresponds to zero magnetic field, our technique can be extended to non-uniform vector potentials, giving non-zero effective magnetic fields.