Quantum phases of electric dipole ensembles in atom chips

TL;DR

This paper explores how electric dipoles in atom chips acquire phase factors in magnetic field gradients, enabling simulation of complex quantum phenomena like the quantum Hall effect with ultracold atoms.

Contribution

It demonstrates a method to generate chiral spin Hamiltonians using electric dipoles in magnetic field gradients on atom chips, facilitating quantum simulations.

Findings

Phase factors generated by electric dipoles in magnetic gradients.

Simulation of quantum Hall and chiral spin models with ultracold atoms.

Proposed experimental setup for realizing chiral ground states.

Abstract

We present how a phase factor is generated when an electric dipole moves along a closed trajectory inside a magnetic field gradient. The similarity of this situation with charged particles in a magnetic field can be employed to simulate condensed matter models, such as the quantum Hall effect and chiral spin Hamiltonians, with ultra cold atoms integrated on atom chips. To illustrate this we consider a triangular configuration of a two dimensional optical lattice, where the chiral spin Hamiltonian $\vec{\sigma}_i \cdot \vec{\sigma}_j \times \vec{\sigma}_k$ can be generated between any three neighbours on a lattice yielding an experimentally implementable chiral ground state.