2013/08/31 by Nathan Goldman, N Goldman, N. Goldman +8 · 1,210 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Fundamental interaction #Gauge (firearms) #Gauge anomaly #Gauge boson #Gauge fixing #Gauge theory #Hamiltonian lattice gauge theory #Introduction to gauge theory #Lorenz gauge condition #Mathematical descriptions of the electromagnetic field #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum gauge theory #Quantum gravity #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Supersymmetric gauge theory #Theoretical physics #Ultracold atom #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.quant-gas #hep-lat #hep-th #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0034-4885/77/12/126401
published in Reports on Progress in Physics 77(12), 126401 (IOP Publishing) · 114 pages, 28 figures. Close to the published version
openalex publication_date 2014/11/25 · arxiv created 2014/12/12 · arxiv updated 2014/12/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Gauge fields are central in our modern understanding of physics at all scales. At the highest energy scales known, the microscopic universe is governed by particles interacting with each other through the exchange of gauge bosons. At the largest length scales, our Universe is ruled by gravity, whose gauge structure suggests the existence of a particle-the graviton-that mediates the gravitational force. At the mesoscopic scale, solid-state systems are subjected to gauge fields of different nature: materials can be immersed in external electromagnetic fields, but they can also feature emerging gauge fields in their low-energy description. In this review, we focus on another kind of gauge field: those engineered in systems of ultracold neutral atoms. In these setups, atoms are suitably coupled to laser fields that generate effective gauge potentials in their description. Neutral atoms 'feeling' laser-induced gauge potentials can potentially mimic the behavior of an electron gas subjected to a magnetic field, but also, the interaction of elementary particles with non-Abelian gauge fields. Here, we review different realized and proposed techniques for creating gauge potentials-both Abelian and non-Abelian-in atomic systems and discuss their implication in the context of quantum simulation. While most of these setups concern the realization of background and classical gauge potentials, we conclude with more exotic proposals where these synthetic fields might be made dynamical, in view of simulating interacting gauge theories with cold atoms.