Viebahn, Konrad

Date:   Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Time:   10:30
Place:   ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg, HIT F 11.1
Host:    Tilman Esslinger

A quasicrystalline optical lattice for ultracold atoms

Konrad Viebahn
University of Cambridge, U.K.

Quasicrystals are long-range ordered and yet non-periodic. This interplay results in a wealth of intriguing physical phenomena, such as the inheritance of topological properties from higher dimensions, and the presence of non-trivial structure on all scales. Here we report on the first experimental demonstration of an eightfold optical lattice, realising a two-dimensional quasicrystalline potential for ultracold atoms. Using matter-wave diffraction we observe the striking self-similarity of the quasicrystalline structure, in close analogy to Shechtman’s very first discovery of quasicrystals using electron diffraction. The diffraction dynamics on short timescales constitutes a continuous-time quantum walk on a homogeneous four-dimensional tight-binding lattice. These measurements pave the way for quantum simulation in higher dimensions.