Synthetic lattices for quantum and classical simulators

Bryce Gadway 
Associate Professor
The Grainger College of Engineering
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Abstract

In recent decades, artificial "materials" built from ultracold atoms, ultracold molecules, and light have enabled the exploration of a range of many-body quantum phenomena. In quantum simulations, such artificial materials can be used to address complex problems that lay beyond the reach of theory and numerics. Such systems also allow experimentalists to bring predicted states of matter to life in the lab, some without any natural analogs.

In this talk, I'll discuss one new approach to such simulation experiments, by which transport can be explored not in a space but in alternative degrees of freedom like the spin of an atom or molecule. I'll describe how we used this approach to explore a new topological state brought about by disorder, the Topological Anderson Insulator. I'll then detail our plans for extending these techniques to the exploration of strongly correlated topological matter. Finally, I'll describe a related effort in our group, led by undergraduates, in which we use synthetic lattice approaches to build lattices of classical mechanical oscillators. I'll describe how we engineer models for mechanical energy transport with complex hopping terms, non-reciprocity, and synthetic nonlinearities, enabling the exploration of a range of phenomena with few natural counterparts.

Bio

Professor Gadway is an experimentalist in atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics. He received his B.A. in astronomy-physics from Colgate University in 2007, graduating summa cum laude. He went on to receive his PhD in physics from Stony Brook University in 2012, working in the group of Dominik Schneble. His thesis research focused on the properties of disordered and low-dimensional atomic quantum gases. From 2012-2014, Professor Gadway was a National Research Council postdoctoral research fellow, working in the group of Deborah Jin and Jun Ye at JILA, in Boulder, Colorado. His postdoctoral research was on strongly correlated systems of ultracold polar molecules. He joined the faculty at the University of Illinois in the fall of 2014.