Seminarium "Modeling of Complex Systems"

In a cold atom gas subject to a spin-dependent 2D optical lattice potential, trapped atoms undergo orbital motion around the minima of the potential. Such atoms are elementary quantum rotors (QRs). The theory of atomic QRs is developed. Wave functions, energies, and degeneracies are determined for both bosonic and fermionic QRs, as well as the magnetic dipole transitions between ground and spin-excited states. QRs in optical lattices with precisely one atom per site can be used as a magnetometer, an accelerometer and a rotation sensor. Such devices have unprecedented accuracy.