Simulating and detecting artificial magnetic fields in trapped atoms

TL;DR

This paper models how a Bose-Einstein condensate in a ring can induce artificial magnetic fields in impurity atoms, providing analytical formulas and discussing experimental detection methods.

Contribution

It introduces an effective Hamiltonian for impurities in a condensate ring and compares analytical results with numerical simulations, advancing understanding of artificial gauge fields.

Findings

Analytical formulas for artificial magnetic field and hopping amplitude derived.

Effective model validated against numerical two-species Bose-Hubbard simulations.

Discussion of experimental detection methods like time of flight imaging.

Abstract

A Bose-Einstein condensate exhibiting a nontrivial phase induces an artificial magnetic field in immersed impurity atoms trapped in a stationary, ring-shaped optical lattice. We present an effective Hamiltonian for the impurities for two condensate setups: the condensate in a rotating ring and in an excited rotational state in a stationary ring. We use Bogoliubov theory to derive analytical formulas for the induced artificial magnetic field and the hopping amplitude in the limit of low condensate temperature where the impurity dynamics is coherent. As methods for observing the artificial magnetic field we discuss time of flight imaging and mass current measurements. Moreover, we compare the analytical results of the effective model to numerical results of a corresponding two-species Bose-Hubbard model. We also study numerically the clustering properties of the impurities and the quantum chaotic behavior of the two-species Bose-Hubbard model.