Broken Symmetries in Cold Atomic Quantum Gases

Project funded by Swedish Research Council (Project grant), grant 2014-04717_VR. Participating organisations named by the source: Lund University. Funded amount: SEK 3,260,000, as stated by the source. Runs 2015-01-01 to 2018-12-31. Keywords: Naturvetenskap, Natural Sciences, Fysik, Physical Sciences, Atom- och molekylfysik och optik, Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics. Source: OpenAIRE Graph, from the funder's project data (collected by OpenAIRE on 2026-07-23); national funding data, not CORDIS. Abstract given by the source: The project focuses on novel types of few- and many-body quantum systems with cold atoms, studying precursors of phase transitions and novel states of quantum matter. We investigate contact-interacting, as well as dipolar and quadrupolar cold atom gases. For charge-neutral atoms, intriguingly, a synthetic spin-orbit coupling can be generated. The realization of spin-half laser-dressed bosons has been a seminal milestone in the field, since such states are fundamentally excluded for usual bosons. The project addresses the few- and many-body physics under the influence of such a synthetic gauge field, that can also be periodically driven, giving rise to interesting dynamical properties. Strongly interacting cold atomic Fermi gases in the few-body limit furthermore provide a fascinating new tool to study quantum magnetism in low-dimensional systems. In a new type of quantum-optical experiments, it became possible to access the few-body quantum states of paired fermions in low-dimensional traps. It was theoretically shown that a sharp Higgs mode appears close to the quantum phase transition between the normal and superfluid phase, stabilized against decay. We study how this Higgs mode, which is an inherent many-body phenomenon, emerges with increasing particle number. Our previous experience with exact numerical methods to solve the quantum-mechanical many-body problem puts us in an ideal position to address this fundamental, yet essentially unexplored, problem.

Original source.

Source: OpenAIRE Graph: projects of national funders, OpenAIRE, from the project data of Swedish Research Council. Retrieved 2026-10-28. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (OpenAIRE Graph). Selected metadata, adapted presentation; the publisher's record is authoritative. No endorsement by the source is implied. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).

AI-assisted summary: The project "Broken Symmetries in Cold Atomic Quantum Gases" was funded by the Swedish Research Council with a grant of SEK 3,260,000, running from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2018, at Lund University. It focuses on studying novel quantum systems with cold atoms and their interactions. Suggested technology pillar: simulation. Generated by AI from the public source text; it may contain errors and the original source is authoritative.