Creating artificial magnetic fields for cold atoms by photon-assisted tunneling

TL;DR

This paper introduces a straightforward method to generate artificial magnetic fields for neutral atoms in 2D optical lattices using photon-assisted tunneling with low-frequency periodic driving, enabling the study of cyclotron-like dynamics.

Contribution

It presents a simple, experimentally feasible setup for creating artificial magnetic fields in cold atom systems via photon-assisted tunneling, without altering the atomic electronic structure.

Findings

Demonstrates effective magnetic field creation using low-frequency periodic driving.

Shows center of mass wave-packet dynamics exhibit cyclotron-like behavior.

Provides a detection method through wave-packet dynamics analysis.

Abstract

This paper proposes a simple setup for introducing an artificial magnetic field for neutral atoms in 2D optical lattices. This setup is based on the phenomenon of photon-assisted tunneling and involves a low-frequency periodic driving of the optical lattice. This low-frequency driving does not affect the electronic structure of the atom and can be easily realized by the same means which employed to create the lattice. We also address the problem of detecting this effective magnetic field. In particular, we study the center of mass wave-packet dynamics, which is shown to exhibit certain features of cyclotron dynamics of a classical charged particle.