3:30–4:30 pm Maria Goeppert-Mayer Lecture Hall
Quantum Simulation of Lattice Gauge Fields
Cheng Chin, University of Chicago
Dynamical coupling between matter and gauge fields underlies the emergence of exotic quasi-particles in condensed matter and high energy physics. An important stepping stone to understand this physics relies on the interplay between the matter and gauge fields. Here we demonstrate deterministic formation of domain walls in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to a synthetic gauge field. The gauge field is created by simultaneous modulations of the lattice potential and atomic interactions. Modeling the domain walls as elementary excitations, we find that the domain walls respond to the gauge field drastically different from that of bare atoms. Our experiment opens promising prospects to simulate the dynamics and interactions of topological defects in a quantum many-body system.