No Arabic abstract
We reveal the universal effect of gauge fields on the existence, evolution, and stability of solitons in the spinor multidimensional nonlinear Schr{o}dinger equation. Focusing on the two-dimensional case, we show that when gauge field can be split in a pure gauge and a rtext{non-pure gauge} generating rtext{effective potential}, the roles of these components in soliton dynamics are different: the btext{localization characteristics} of emerging states are determined by the curvature, while pure gauge affects the stability of the modes. Respectively the solutions can be exactly represented as the envelopes independent of the pure gauge, modulating stationary carrier-mode states, which are independent of the curvature. Our central finding is that nonzero curvature can lead to the existence of unusual modes, in particular, enabling stable localized self-trapped fundamental and vortex-carrying states in media with constant repulsive interactions without additional external confining potentials and even in the expulsive external traps.
Dark solitons and localized defect modes against periodic backgrounds are considered in arrays of waveguides with defocusing Kerr nonlinearity constituting a nonlinear lattice. Bright defect modes are supported by local increase of the nonlinearity, while dark defect modes are supported by a local decrease of the nonlinearity. Dark solitons exist for both types of the defect, although in the case of weak nonlinearity they feature side bright humps making the total energy propagating through the system larger than the energy transferred by the constant background. All considered defect modes are found stable. Dark solitons are characterized by relatively narrow windows of stability. Interactions of unstable dark solitons with bright and dark modes are described.
We study collective modes of vortex lattices in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates subject to synthetic magnetic fields in mutually parallel or antiparallel directions. By means of the Bogoliubov theory with the lowest-Landau-level approximation, we numerically calculate the excitation spectra for a rich variety of vortex lattices that appear commonly for parallel and antiparallel synthetic fields. We find that in all of these cases, there appear two distinct modes with linear and quadratic dispersion relations at low energies, which exhibit anisotropy reflecting the symmetry of each lattice structure. Remarkably, the low-energy spectra for the two types of fields are found to be related to each other by simple rescaling when vortices in different components overlap owing to an intercomponent attraction. These results are consistent with an effective field theory analysis. However, the rescaling relations break down for interlaced vortex lattices appearing with an intercomponent repulsion, indicating a nontrivial effect of an intercomponent vortex displacement beyond the effective field theory. We also find that high-energy parts of the excitation bands exhibit line or point nodes as a consequence of a fractional translation symmetry present in some of the lattice structures.
We investigate few body physics in a cold atomic system with synthetic dimensions (Celi et al., PRL 112, 043001 (2014)) which realizes a Hofstadter model with long-ranged interactions along the synthetic dimension. We show that the problem can be mapped to a system of particles (with $SU(M)$ symmetric interactions) which experience an $SU(M)$ Zeeman field at each lattice site {em and} a non-Abelian $SU(M)$ gauge potential that affects their hopping from one site to another. This mapping brings out the possibility of generating {em non-local} interactions (interaction between particles at different physical sites). It also shows that the non-Abelian gauge field, which induces a flavor-orbital coupling, mitigates the baryon breaking effects of the Zeeman field. For $M$ particles, the $SU(M)$ singlet baryon which is site localized, is deformed to be a nonlocal object (squished baryon) by the combination of the Zeeman and the non-Abelian gauge potential, an effect that we conclusively demonstrate by analytical arguments and exact (numerical) diagonalization studies. These results not only promise a rich phase diagram in the many body setting, but also suggests possibility of using cold atom systems to address problems that are inconceivable in traditional condensed matter systems. As an example, we show that the system can be adapted to realize Hamiltonians akin to the $SU(M)$ random flux model.
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.
We show that homogeneous lattice gauge theories can realize nonequilibrium quantum phases with long-range spatiotemporal order protected by gauge invariance instead of disorder. We study a kicked $mathbb{Z}_2$-Higgs gauge theory and find that it breaks the discrete temporal symmetry by a period doubling. In a limit solvable by Jordan-Wigner analysis we extensively study the time-crystal properties for large systems and further find that the spatiotemporal order is robust under the addition of a solvability-breaking perturbation preserving the $mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge symmetry. The protecting mechanism for the nonequilibrium order relies on the Hilbert space structure of lattice gauge theories, so that our results can be directly extended to other models with discrete gauge symmetries.