AN APPARATUS FOR LIGHT-LESS ARTIFICIAL GAUGE FIELDS AND NEW IMAGING TECHNIQUES

Abstract

The thesis presented has three components: experiments with artificial vector potentials, a new atom-chip apparatus designed and built for light-less fictitious gauge fields, and an imaging experiment. First, we introduce experiments with light-induced vector potentials using two-photon Raman coupling to simulate charged particles using charge neutral Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). Depending on the spatial and temporal properties of the engineered vector potential, it is possible for ultracold atoms to experience different variants of an effective Lorenz force such as; magnetic fields, electric fields, and spin-orbit coupling, via coupling between an atom's internal spin and its linear momentum. In this context, we discuss the main focus of this thesis, the design and construction of an atom-chip apparatus for $^{87}$Rb BECs for experiments with light-less artificial gauge fields. Eliminating the source of heating due to spontaneous emission will open new paths to explore artificial gauge fields in alkali fermions and will be a step towards the realization of simulated topological insulators using ultracold atoms. Finally, we will describe in detail an imaging experiment performed on this new apparatus, the reconstruction of the two-dimensional column density of a BEC using multiple defocused images taken simultaneously.