2025/02/07 by Chetan Sriram Madasu, Madasu, Chetan S., Mitra, Chirantan +13 · 3 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Atmospheric Ozone and Climate #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Optics (physics.optics) #Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.04714
openalex publication_date 2025/02/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Spin-orbit interaction couples the spin of a particle to its motion and leads to spin-induced transport phenomena such as spin-Hall effects and Chern insulators. In this work, we extend the concept of internal-external state coupling to higher internal symmetry, exploring features beyond the established spin-orbit regime. We couple suitable resonant laser beams to a gas of ultracold atoms, thereby inducing artificial SU(3) non-Abelian gauge fields that act on a degenerate ground state manifold comprised of three dark states. We demonstrate the inherent all-state connectivity of SU(3) systems by performing targeted geometric transformations. Then, we investigate color-orbit coupling, an extension of SU(2) spin-orbit coupling to SU(3) systems. We reveal a rich dynamical interplay between three distinct oscillation frequencies, which possesses interesting analogies with neutrino oscillations and quark mixing mechanisms. In the future, the system should provide a testbed for exploring topological properties of SU(3) systems.