Line of Dirac monopoles embedded in a Bose-Einstein condensate

The gauge field of a uniform line of magnetic monopoles is created using a single Laguerre-Gauss laser mode and a gradient in the physical magnetic field. We study the effect of these monopoles on a Bose condensed atomic gas, whose vortex structure transforms when more than six monopoles are trapped within the cloud. Finally, we study this transition with the collective modes

Comment on "Magnetic-Field-Tuned Quantum Phase Transition in the Insulating Regime of Ultrathin Amorphous Bi Films"

A recent letter [Lin & Goldman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 127003 (2011)] has presented experimental data in highly disordered thin films, which were interpreted as a quantum phase transition, an intriguing and surprising result for this system. Here we present a first-principles calculation which captures the observed phenomena, and provides an alternative mechanism of activated transport through the disordered landscape rather than a quantum phase transition

Itinerant ferromagnetism in an interacting Fermi gas with mass imbalance

We study the emergence of itinerant ferromagnetism in an ultra-cold atomic gas with a variable mass ratio between the up and down spin species. Mass imbalance breaks the SU(2) spin symmetry leading to a modified Stoner criterion. We first elucidate the phase behavior in both the grand canonical and canonical ensembles. Secondly, we apply the formalism to a harmonic trap to demonstrate how a mass imbalance delivers unique experimental signatures of ferromagnetism. These could help future experiments to better identify the putative ferromagnetic state. Furthermore, we highlight how a mass imbalance suppresses the three-body loss processes that handicap the formation of a ferromagnetic state. Finally, we study the time dependent formation of the ferromagnetic phase following a quench in the interaction strength