Non-abelian anyons from degenerate Landau levels of ultracold atoms in artificial gauge potentials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that non-abelian gauge potentials in ultracold atomic gases can produce ground states with non-abelian excitations, including non-abelian quantum Hall states like Moore-Read states, in a realistic setting.

Contribution

It introduces a realistic non-abelian gauge potential framework that yields non-abelian quantum Hall states in ultracold gases with strong interactions.

Findings

Non-abelian gauge potentials create non-degenerate Landau levels.

Degeneracy points host non-abelian quantum Hall states.

Both fermionic and bosonic gases can realize these states.

Abstract

We show that non-abelian potentials acting on ultracold gases with two hyperfine levels can give rise to ground states with non-abelian excitations. We consider a realistic gauge potential for which the Landau levels can be exactly determined: the non-abelian part of the vector potential makes the Landau levels non-degenerate. In the presence of strong repulsive interactions, deformed Laughlin ground states occur in general. However, at the degeneracy points of the Landau levels, non-abelian quantum Hall states appear: these ground states, including deformed Moore-Read states (characterized by Ising anyons as quasi-holes), are studied for both fermionic and bosonic gases.