Direct observation of zitterbewegung in a Bose–Einstein condensate

By L. LeBlanc, M. Beeler, K. Jiménez-García, A. R. Perry, S. Sugawa, R. A. Williams, Ian B. Spielman. 2013

172 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Zitterbewegung, a force-free trembling motion first predicted for relativistic fermions like electrons, was an unexpected consequence of the Dirac equation's unification of quantum mechanics and special relativity. Though the oscillatory motion's large frequency and small amplitude have precluded its measurement with electrons, zitterbewegung is observable via quantum simulation. We engineered an environment for 87Rb Bose–Einstein condensates where the constituent atoms behaved like relativistic particles subject to the one-dimensional Dirac equation. With direct imaging, we observed the sub-micrometre trembling motion of these clouds, demonstrating the utility of neutral ultracold quantum gases for simulating Dirac particles.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/98bb4a6c3562a5fc91fdb152d3e4360468d565be

Citations in the corpus

• Artificial gauge fields in materials and engineered systems (2017, unknown): “Zitterbewegung oscillations between the two energy branches were observed following a sudden quench of the spin–orbit coupling [391,392].”