2005/03/08 by J. Ruseckas, G. Juzeliunas, P. Oehberg +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.mes-hall #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.95.010404
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 010404 (2005) · 4 pages, 1 figure
arxiv created 2005/03/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We show that the adiabatic motion of ultra-cold, multi-level atoms in spatially varying laser fields can give rise to effective non-Abelian gauge fields if degenerate adiabatic eigenstates of the atom-laser interaction exist. A pair of such degenerate dark states emerges e.g. if laser fields couple three internal states of an atom to a fourth common one under pairwise two--photon-resonance conditions. For this so-called tripod scheme we derive general conditions for truly non-Abelian gauge potentials and discuss special examples. In particular we show that using orthogonal laser beams with orbital angular momentum an effective magnetic field can be generated that has a monopole component.