Event Details

The well controllable atomic samples have allowed physicists to access a wide range of quantum phenomena unattainable in other systems. I will discuss a few such examples. The first example includes topological defects in high dimensions, ranging from Yang monopoles to continuous topological defects in five dimensions. A Yang monopole as a fundamental ingredient in non-abelian gauge theories was proposed back to seventy years ago. It was recently delivered for the first time in an experiment by tailoring laser-atom couplings in a five-dimensional parameter space. Moreover, highly tunable interactions between atoms could turn a Yang monopole into a much broader range of continuous topological defects. In another example, I will show how to create synthetic curved spaces, including a Hall cylinder and a Hall torus. Coupling internal degrees of freedom and orbital motions of ultracold atoms allows us to bypass constraints from physical laws and thread a finite effective magnetic flux through the surface of a torus or a cylinder. This development opens the door to exploring intriguing quantum phenomena inherent to the topology of spaces.