A synthetic electric force acting on neutral atoms

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the creation of a synthetic electric field acting on neutral atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate by manipulating an effective vector potential, revealing new ways to simulate electromagnetic phenomena in neutral matter.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate a synthetic electric field in a neutral atom system using a time-dependent effective vector potential, advancing quantum simulation capabilities.

Findings

Neutral atoms behave as charged particles in the presence of a synthetic vector potential.

A synthetic electric field was successfully generated through the time dependence of the vector potential.

The approach enables exploration of electromagnetic effects in neutral quantum gases.

Abstract

Electromagnetism is a simple example of a gauge theory where the underlying potentials -- the vector and scalar potentials -- are defined only up to a gauge choice. The vector potential generates magnetic fields through its spatial variation and electric fields through its time-dependence. We experimentally produce a synthetic gauge field that emerges only at low energy in a rubidium Bose-Einstein condensate: the neutral atoms behave as charged particles do in the presence of a homogeneous effective vector potential. We have generated a synthetic electric field through the time dependence of an effective vector potential, a physical consequence even though the vector potential is spatially uniform.