Abstract:
Ultracold atoms are a fantastic tool for exploring the exciting regions of quantum mechanics. Due to the large amount of experimental control available over them, they can be manipulated and controlled in many different ways creating effective Hamiltonians that resemble other areas of physics such as condensed matter, particle physics and even in some cases, cosmology. An area of interest that is quickly gathering interest is that of formulating artificial gauge potentials in ultracold atoms by means of creating an effective Hamiltonian that involves gauge invariant terms, allowing the simulation of difficult phenomena, such as the quantum Hall effect. This thesis presents our first numerical and experimental investigations into formulating artificial gauge potentials with ultracold atoms. We use a pair of Raman laser beams to couple the atomic spin states creating spin-momentum superpositions. By modifying the coupling between the spin states, an effective Hamiltonian resembling that of charged particles in electric and magnetic fields, or Hamiltonians describing high energy particles in field theory, can be created. We finally present the steps we are taking to extend our research into exploring the effects of introducing a local density dependence to the gauge fields by means of a Feshbach resonance allowing quantum simulation of dynamic gauge fields.