Ultracold atoms with extra spin: Alkaline earth atoms for quantum many-body physics
Dr. Simon Fölling (LMU München)

Modern experiments with ultracold atoms achieve ever higher control over the dynamics and interactions of particle ensembles, allowing for a very close modeling of quantum many body systems with strong interactions.
With better experimental techniques and novel approaches it is becoming more feasible to add the internal degrees of freedom to these external dynamics and interactions - often generating a parallel to the spin in the case of electrons in condensed matter physics. Interactions between particles carrying different spins can then for example lead to magnetic states, with complex spin correlations depending on the nature of the underlying interactions. I will discuss current work on how to create and detect many-body states with effective and real internal degrees of freedom using ultracold atoms in optical lattice systems, and describe our experiments' approach based on alkaline-earth atoms rather than the more common alkali gases.