Quantum simulation and many-body physics with cold atoms

Xiao-Fei Zhang, Yao-hua Chen, GuoCai Liu +3 more

Nikolaj Thomas Zinner

Cold atomic gases have provided us with a great number of opportunities for studying various physical systems under controlled conditions that are seldom offered in other fields. We are thus at the point where one can truly do quantum simulation of models that are relevant for instance in condensed-matter or high-energy physics, i.e. we are on the verge of a ’cool’ quantum simulator as envisioned by Feynman. One of the avenues under exploration is the physics of one-dimensional systems. Until recently this was mostly in the many-body limit but now experiments can be performed with controllable particle numbers all the way down to the few-body regime. After a brief introduction to some of the relevant experiments, I will review recent theoretical work on one-dimensional quantum systems containing bosons, fermions, or mixtures of the two, with a particular emphasis on the case where the particles are held by an external trap.

Laurent Sanchez-Palencia

Nikolaj Thomas Zinner

Cold atomic gases have provided us with a great number of opportunities for studying various physical systems under controlled conditions that are seldom offered in other fields. We are thus at the point where one can truly do quantum simulation of models that are relevant for instance in condensed-matter or high-energy physics, i.e. we are on the verge of a ’cool’ quantum simulator as envisioned by Feynman. One of the avenues under exploration is the physics of one-dimensional systems. Until recently this was mostly in the many-body limit but now experiments can be performed with controllable particle numbers all the way down to the few-body regime. After a brief introduction to some of the relevant experiments, I will review recent theoretical work on one-dimensional quantum systems containing bosons, fermions, or mixtures of the two, with a particular emphasis on the case where the particles are held by an external trap.

Laurent Sanchez-Palencia

Michał Tomza, Krzysztof Jachymski, R. Gerritsma +4 more

This article presents the microscopic physics governing interactions and dynamical processes between cold atoms and ions, and it reviews how these system can be prepared and combined in experiments. Also discussed are how ultracold ion-atom hybrid systems can be applied to study controlled chemical reactions, to form and explore the spectroscopy of cold molecular ions, and to implement quantum simulations of many-body phenomena.