Creating magnets with neutral atoms and optical lattices
Dr. Simon Fölling (Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik)

Ultracold, neutral atoms are increasingly popular as a possibly way to implement physical models originally devised for much "hotter", and electrically charged, electrons. Most of the successfully implemented analogies so far have investigated effects related to insulator/conductor transitions and states -- states which affect the mobility of particles.

With better experimental techniques and novel approaches it is becoming more promising to consider also systems with internal degrees of freedom - usually spin in the case of electrons. Interactions between particles carrying different spins can then give rise to magnetic states, with complex spin correlations depending on the nature of the underlying interactions. We will discuss current work on how to create and detect "magnetic" states using ultracold atoms in optical lattice systems, and describe why our approach is based on alkaline-earth atoms rather than the more common alkali gases.