Synthetic magnetic fields for cold erbium atoms

Abstract

The implementation of the fractional quantum Hall effect in ultracold atomic quantum gases remains, despite substantial advances in the field, a major challenge. Since atoms are electrically neutral, a key ingredient is the generation of sufficiently strong artificial gauge fields. Here we theoretically investigate the synthetization of such fields for bosonic erbium atoms by phase imprinting with two counter-propagating optical Raman beams. Given the non-vanishing orbital angular momentum of the rare earth atomic erbium species in the electronic ground state and the availability of narrow-line transitions, heating from photon scattering is expected to be lower than in the frequently investigated atomic alkali species. We give a parameter regime for which strong synthetic magnetic fields with good spatial homogeneity are predicted. We also estimate the size of the Laughlin gap for typical experimental parameters of a two-dimensional atomic erbium microcloud. Our analysis shows that cold rare earth atomic ensembles are highly attractive candidate systems for experimental explorations of the fractional quantum Hall regime.