Double and negative reflection of cold atoms in non-Abelian gauge potentials

Abstract

Atom reflection is studied in the presence of a non-Abelian vector potential proportional to a spin-1/2 operator. The potential is produced by a relatively simple laser configuration for atoms with a tripod level scheme. We show that the atomic motion is described by two different dispersion branches with positive or negative chirality. As a consequence of that, atom reflection shows unusual features, since an incident wave may split into two reflected ones at a barrier, an ordinary specular reflection, and an additional non-specular one. Remarkably, the latter wave can exhibit negative reflection and may become evanescent if the angle of incidence exceeds a critical value. These reflection properties are crucial for future designs in non-Abelian atom optics.

5 figures corrected references

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• Massless Dirac Fermions in a Square Optical Lattice
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• Spin-orbit coupling and perpendicular Zeeman field for fermionic cold atoms: observation of the intrinsic anomalous Hall effect
• Artificial non-Abelian lattice gauge fields for photons in the synthetic frequency dimension
• Goos-Hänchen shifts in spin-orbit-coupled cold atoms
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• Spin-sensitive atom mirror via spin-orbit interaction
• Universal properties of boundary and interface charges in multichannel one-dimensional continuum models
• Non-abelian Geometric Quantum Energy Pump
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