Ultracold fermions trapped in nanostructured lattices
Résumé
Ultra-cold atoms systems used as quantum simulators offer an alternative way to simulate many-body systems
behaviour in condensed matter. Indeed, we can create artificial matter with optical lattices : the stationnary
wave reproduces the potential wells in the crystalline structure. Moreover, the big advantage of using cold atoms
is that the parameters of the simulated crystal can be well controlled so that we can understand the electrical
and magnetism properties of the condensed matter such as conductivity, ferromagnetism ...The common
approach for generating optical lattices is interfering two laser beams in one dimension. The lattice spacing is
limited by the interfringe, which is half the wavelength. However, the more the lattice spacing decreases, the
more the interaction energies increase [3].In the new ongoing project, we are going to produce subwavelength
lattices by irradiating a nanostructure gold layer. The subwavelength potential is got thanks to the control of
the interactions between the beams, the atomic cloud, and the nanostructured surface. This system will be able
to study new interaction regimes with very high tunability (different lattice geometries, impurities...).