Hamburg Photon Science Colloquium | New forms of matter: synthetic magnetic fields & supersolidity

by Wolfgang Ketterle (Department of Physics, MIT Cambridge, MA, USA)

Tuesday 12 Dec 2017, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Berlin

CFEL, Bldg. 99 (DESY Hamburg)

The properties of ultracold atoms can be profoundly modified with the help of laser beams. They can modify the wavefunction of neutral atoms in such a way that they show behavior of charged particles, e.g. electrons in high magnetic fields. In this way, synthetic magnetic fields and spin-orbit coupling have been realized, and a supersolid phase has been observed. A supersolid is superfluid and breaks translational symmetry, i.e. it has shape.