2015 CAP Congress / Congrès de l'ACP 2015

Cavity-induced spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensation: A new approach for exploring cold atoms

17 Jun 2015, 09:15

15m

CCIS L2-200 (University of Alberta)

Oral (Student, In Competition) / Orale (Étudiant(e), inscrit à la compétition) Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, Canada / Division de la physique atomique, moléculaire et photonique, Canada (DAMOPC-DPAMPC) W1-10 Quantum Optics and Cavity QED (DAMOPC) / Optique quantique et ÉDQ en cavité (DPAMPC)

Speaker

Farokh Mivehvar (University of Calgary)

Description

The atom-photon interaction is significantly amplified when the radiation field is confined inside a high-finesse cavity, resulting in a complex, coupled dynamics of the quantized matter and radiation fields. This coupled dynamics in turn mediates long-ranged interactions between atoms. Here we demonstrate how to simultaneously induce spin-orbit (SO) coupling and long-ranged interactions in a Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) using two counter-propagating modes of a ring cavity. The interplay between the standard two-body and cavity-mediated interactions determines the ground state and elementary excitations of the SO-coupled BEC. The ground state is either a plane wave or stripe phase, where in the latter case the density exhibits spatial modulations along the SO coupling direction. This opens up a possible new experimental approach for exploring quantum gases by tuning cavity parameters instead of using Feshbach resonance techniques.

Presentation materials

Slides

CAP-2015.pdf