Spin-orbit coupling and supersolidity in ultracold quantum gases

Ultracold quantum gases provide a clean, isolated, and controllable platform for simulating and characterizing complex physical phenomena. In this thesis, I present several experiments on realizing one-dimensional spin-orbit coupling in ultracold 23Na gases and the creation of a new form of matter with supersolid properties using interacting spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates. The first part describes the realization of spin-orbit coupling in optical superlattices which consist of stack of pancakes of imbalanced double-wells. The orbital levels, individual pancakes, in an superlattice potential are used as pseudospin states. Spinorbit coupling was induced by two-photon Raman transition between the pseudospin states, and was experimentally characterized by the spin-dependent momentum structure from this dressing. The realization suppresses heating due to spontaneous emission.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Li, Junru,Ph. D.Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Wolfgang Ketterle.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123348

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/123348