Synthetic magnetic fields for cold erbium atoms

Babik D, Roell R, Helten D, Fleischhauer M, Weitz M (2020)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2020

Journal

Physical Review A American Physical Society

Book Volume: 101

Article Number: 053603

Journal Issue: 5

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.101.053603

Abstract

The implementation of the fractional quantum Hall effect in ultracold atomic quantum gases remains, despite substantial advances in the field, a major challenge. Since atoms are electrically neutral, a key ingredient is the generation of sufficiently strong artificial gauge fields. Here we theoretically investigate the synthetization of such fields for bosonic erbium atoms by phase imprinting with two counterpropagating optical Raman beams. Given the nonvanishing orbital angular momentum of the rare-earth atomic species erbium in the electronic ground state and the availability of narrow-line transitions, heating from photon scattering is expected to be lower than in atomic alkali-metal species. We give a parameter regime for which strong synthetic magnetic fields with good spatial homogeneity are predicted. We also estimate the size of the Laughlin gap expected from the s-wave contribution of the interactions for typical experimental parameters of a two-dimensional atomic erbium microcloud. Our analysis shows that cold rare-earth atomic ensembles are highly attractive candidate systems for experimental explorations of the fractional quantum Hall regime.

Involved external institutions

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn DE Germany (DE) Technische Universität Kaiserslautern DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Babik, D., Roell, R., Helten, D., Fleischhauer, M., & Weitz, M. (2020). Synthetic magnetic fields for cold erbium atoms. Physical Review A, 101(5). https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.101.053603

MLA:

Babik, Daniel, et al. "Synthetic magnetic fields for cold erbium atoms." Physical Review A 101.5 (2020).

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