Synthesis and observation of non-Abelian gauge fields in real space
© 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved. Particles placed inside an Abelian (commutative) gauge field can acquire different phases when traveling along the same path in opposite directions, as is evident from the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Such behaviors can get si...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132454 |
| _version_ | 1811095922857213952 |
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| author | Yang, Yi Peng, Chao Zhu, Di Buljan, Hrvoje Joannopoulos, John D Zhen, Bo Soljačić, Marin |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics Yang, Yi Peng, Chao Zhu, Di Buljan, Hrvoje Joannopoulos, John D Zhen, Bo Soljačić, Marin |
| author_sort | Yang, Yi |
| collection | MIT |
| description | © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved. Particles placed inside an Abelian (commutative) gauge field can acquire different phases when traveling along the same path in opposite directions, as is evident from the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Such behaviors can get significantly enriched for a non-Abelian gauge field, where even the ordering of different paths cannot be switched. So far, real-space realizations of gauge fields have been limited to Abelian ones. We report an experimental synthesis of non-Abelian gauge fields in real space and the observation of the non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm effect with classical waves and classical fluxes. On the basis of optical mode degeneracy, we break time-reversal symmetry in different manners, via temporal modulation and the Faraday effect, to synthesize tunable non-Abelian gauge fields. The Sagnac interference of two final states, obtained by reversely ordered path integrals, demonstrates the noncommutativity of the gauge fields. Our work introduces real-space building blocks for non-Abelian gauge fields, relevant for classical and quantum exotic topological phenomena. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:34:17Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/132454 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:34:17Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1324542023-01-20T21:00:23Z Synthesis and observation of non-Abelian gauge fields in real space Yang, Yi Peng, Chao Zhu, Di Buljan, Hrvoje Joannopoulos, John D Zhen, Bo Soljačić, Marin Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved. Particles placed inside an Abelian (commutative) gauge field can acquire different phases when traveling along the same path in opposite directions, as is evident from the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Such behaviors can get significantly enriched for a non-Abelian gauge field, where even the ordering of different paths cannot be switched. So far, real-space realizations of gauge fields have been limited to Abelian ones. We report an experimental synthesis of non-Abelian gauge fields in real space and the observation of the non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm effect with classical waves and classical fluxes. On the basis of optical mode degeneracy, we break time-reversal symmetry in different manners, via temporal modulation and the Faraday effect, to synthesize tunable non-Abelian gauge fields. The Sagnac interference of two final states, obtained by reversely ordered path integrals, demonstrates the noncommutativity of the gauge fields. Our work introduces real-space building blocks for non-Abelian gauge fields, relevant for classical and quantum exotic topological phenomena. 2021-09-20T18:22:30Z 2021-09-20T18:22:30Z 2019 2020-10-30T18:11:22Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132454 en 10.1126/SCIENCE.AAY3183 Science Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) arXiv |
| spellingShingle | Yang, Yi Peng, Chao Zhu, Di Buljan, Hrvoje Joannopoulos, John D Zhen, Bo Soljačić, Marin Synthesis and observation of non-Abelian gauge fields in real space |
| title | Synthesis and observation of non-Abelian gauge fields in real space |
| title_full | Synthesis and observation of non-Abelian gauge fields in real space |
| title_fullStr | Synthesis and observation of non-Abelian gauge fields in real space |
| title_full_unstemmed | Synthesis and observation of non-Abelian gauge fields in real space |
| title_short | Synthesis and observation of non-Abelian gauge fields in real space |
| title_sort | synthesis and observation of non abelian gauge fields in real space |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132454 |
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