Atoms ‘pumped’ into a quantum fluid from a Bose-Einstein condensate

Researchers have devised a method to construct a fractional quantum Hall fluid by “pumping” individual atoms into the exotic state using specifically shaped Raman beams. Alberto Tabarelli de Fatis of the Pitaevskii BEC Center, INO-CNR and Università di Trento, and colleagues detail a protocol to adiabatically prepare this many-particle fluid from a Bose-Einstein condensate, coherently adding atoms with well-defined angular momentum. The work identifies an adiabatic path that avoids instabilities which typically limit the size of these systems, and numerically assesses the protocol’s efficiency for particle numbers exceeding current experimental capabilities. This approach demonstrates the benefit of using anharmonic confinement in realizing these complex quantum states. This method bypasses traditional approaches that rely on finite-size systems and induced topological gaps, instead focusing on a coherent transfer of particles from a Bose-Einstein condensate. The resulting fluid exhibits properties stemming from the interplay of strong interactions and magnetic fields. This is achieved through an adiabatic path…