Zitterbewegung in Cold Atoms

王昭阳 Zhaoyang Wang, 陈园园 Yuanyuan Chen

J. Y. Vaishnav, Charles W. Clark

Jian-Jun Song, Bradley A. Foreman

We propose a scheme to realize Zitterbewegung (ZB) with cold atoms in an Abelian vector potential. Two dark states can be created by interacting alkali-metal atoms with three coaxial Gaussian beams. Atoms moving in the subspace spanned by the two dark states feel a vector gauge potential that is nonvanishing only along the laser axis. We show that cold atoms in this Abelian vector potential undergo ZB with a large amplitude detectable in experiment.

Waldyr A. Serras, Jayme Vaz

Donald H. Kobe

Qi Zhang, Jiangbin Gong, C. H. Oh

By considering mirror oscillation in a ``tripod-scheme'' laser-atom system, we advocate explorative studies of driven Dirac-like equations. Both analytical and numerical studies show that mirror oscillation can be used to drive an effective spin-orbit interaction and hence control the amplitude, the frequency, and the damping of the cold-atom Zitterbewegung oscillation. Our results demonstrate an interesting coupling between the mirror mechanical motion and a fundamental quantum coherent oscillation, opening up new means of matter-wave manipulation.