Ultracold atoms in nanostructured lattices

Caroline Busquet, Maxime Bellouvet, Hugo Salvador Vásquez Bullón, Jinyi Zhang, Simon Bernon, Philippe Bouyer

Published Mar 2, 2016• 0 citations

Abstract

Ultra-cold atoms systems used as quantum simulators offer an alternative way to simulate many-body systemsbehaviour in condensed matter. Indeed, we can create artificial matter with optical lattices : the stationnarywave reproduces the potential wells in the crystalline structure. Moreover, the big advantage of using cold atomsis that the parameters of the simulated crystal can be well controlled so that we can understand the electricaland magnetism properties of the condensed matter such as conductivity, ferromagnetism ...The commonapproach for generating optical lattices is interfering two laser beams in one dimension. The lattice spacing islimited by the interfringe, which is half the wavelength. However, the more the lattice spacing decreases, themore the interaction energies increase [3].In the new ongoing project, we are going to produce subwavelengthlattices by irradiating a nanostructure gold layer. The subwavelength potential is got thanks to the control ofthe interactions between the beams, the atomic cloud, and the nanostructured surface. This system will be ableto study new interaction regimes with very high tunability (different lattice geometries, impurities...).

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