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Ultracold quantum gases in optical lattices

Nature Physics volume 1, pages 23–30 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Artificial crystals of light, consisting of hundreds of thousands of optical microtraps, are routinely created by interfering optical laser beams. These so-called optical lattices act as versatile potential landscapes to trap ultracold quantum gases of bosons and fermions. They form powerful model systems of quantum many-body systems in periodic potentials for probing nonlinear wave dynamics and strongly correlated quantum phases, building fundamental quantum gates or observing Fermi surfaces in periodic potentials. Optical lattices represent a fast-paced modern and interdisciplinary field of research.

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Figure 1: Optical lattice potentials formed by superimposing two or three orthogonal standing waves.
Figure 2: Optical lattice potentials.
Figure 3: Adiabatic mapping of crystal momentum onto free-space momentum of an atom.
Figure 4: Nonlinear dynamics for a BEC in a double-well system.
Figure 5: Dynamical instability of a BEC in a periodic potential.
Figure 6: Transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator.
Figure 7: Observing Fermi surfaces.
Figure 8: Quantum noise correlations in atom clouds released from an optical lattice.

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  1. Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, D-55099, Germany

    Immanuel Bloch

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Bloch, I. Ultracold quantum gases in optical lattices. Nature Phys 1, 23–30 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys138

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