Description
Certain cold atoms, namely the alkaline earth-like atoms
whose electronic degrees of freedom are decoupled from their
nuclear spin, can be thought of as quantum particles with an
SU(N)-symmetric spin. These have recently been cooled to
quantum degeneracy in the laboratories around the world. A
new world of SU(N) physics has thus become accessible to
experiment, including that described by the SU(N) Hubbard
model in various dimensions as well as many others. We show
that the Mott insulator of such cold atoms is a SU(N)
symmetric antiferromagnet of the type not commonly studied
in the literature. We further show that in 2 dimensions,
this antiferromagnet is a chiral spin liquid, a long
sought-after topological state of magnets, with fractional
and non-Abelian excitations.
Primary author
Prof.
Victor Gurarie
(University of Colorado at Boulder)
