Spatial patterns in optical lattices submitted to gauge potentials

N. Goldman

Published 2007-07-25, updated 2007-09-06Version 2

We study the vortex formation in optical lattices submitted to artificial gauge potentials. We compute the superfluid density for Abelian and non-Abelian gauge potentials with a mean-field approach of the Bose-Hubbard model and we determine the rule describing the number of vortices as a function of the effective magnetic flux. This simple rule is represented by a remarkably rich figure that represents the superfluid density as a function of the flux. The phenomena which emanate from this work should be observed experimentally in optical lattices within which atom tunneling is laser-assisted and described by commutative or non-commutative tunneling operators.