Résumé
Ultracold atoms are one of the most powerful tools to simulate your beloved or hated Hamiltonian. Thanks to the extremely precise and wide tunable properties, they can be used to investigate phenomena spanning from solid state to cosmology, from nuclear physics to chemistry.
One example of a very rich ultracold gas simulator is the mixture of two different hyperfine states of sodium coupled by a coherent microwave field. Due to the interplay between the many body interactions and the coherent coupling, different scenarios can be engineered.
In my talk I will present the two last investigations performed in our lab.
First the simulation of magnetic interfaces. Thanks to non-uniform profile of our cloud, we can simulate the interface between a ferro and a paramagnet and observe its “self-destruction” into magnetic shock-wave.
Secondly the creation of massive spin excitations. While in an uncoupled system, density and spin excitations have linear dispersion relations with associated sound velocities (typical of massless systems), the introduction of a coupling leads to massive spin excitations which are a powerful tool to simulate analog gravity and other high energy phenomena.
I will conclude with some highlights on our future directions.
