The Peierls substitution in an engineered lattice potential

Artificial gauge fields open new possibilities to realize quantum many-body systems with ultracold atoms, by engineering Hamiltonians usually associated with electronic systems. In the presence of a periodic potential, artificial gauge fields may bring ultracold atoms closer to the quantum Hall regime. Here, we describe a one-dimensional lattice derived purely from effective Zeeman-shifts resulting from a combination of Raman coupling and radiofrequency magnetic fields. In this lattice, the tunneling matrix element is generally complex. We control both the amplitude and the phase of this tunneling parameter, experimentally realizing the Peierls substitution for ultracold neutral atoms.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

A Bose-Einstein Condensate in a Uniform Light-induced Vector Potential

We use a two-photon dressing field to create an effective vector gauge potential for Bose-condensed Rb atoms in the F=1 hyperfine ground state. The dressed states in this Raman field are spin and momentum superpositions, and we adiabatically load the atoms into the lowest energy dressed state. The effective Hamiltonian of these neutral atoms is like that of charged particles in a uniform magnetic vector potential, whose magnitude is set by the strength and detuning of Raman coupling. The spin and momentum decomposition of the dressed states reveals the strength of the effective vector potential, and our measurements agree quantitatively with a simple single-particle model. While the uniform effective vector potential described here corresponds to zero magnetic field, our technique can be extended to non-uniform vector potentials, giving non-zero effective magnetic fields.Comment: 5 pages, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Spin Transition in Strongly Correlated Bilayer Two Dimensional Electron Systems

Using a combination of heat pulse and nuclear magnetic resonance techniques we demonstrate that the phase boundary separating the interlayer phase coherent quantum Hall effect at $\nu_T = 1$ in bilayer electron gases from the weakly coupled compressible phase depends upon the spin polarization of the nuclei in the host semiconductor crystal. Our results strongly suggest that, contrary to the usual assumption, the transition is attended by a change in the electronic spin polarization.Comment: 4 pages, 3 postscript figur

Theory of the tunneling resonances of the bilayer electron systems in strong magnetic field

We develop a theory for the anomalous interlayer conductance peaks observed in bilayer electron systems at nu=1. Our model shows the that the size of the peak at zero bias decreases rapidly with increasing in-plane magnetic field, but its location is unchanged. The I-V characteristic is linear at small voltages, in agreement with experimental observations. In addition we make quantitative predictions for how the inter-layer conductance peaks vary in position with in-plane magnetic field at high voltages. Finally, we predict novel bi-stable behavior at intermediate voltages.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure