Quantum Hall physics in rotating Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

The close theoretical analogy between the physics of rapidly rotating atomic Bose condensates and the quantum Hall effect (i.e., a two dimensional electron gas in a strong magnetic field) was first pointed out ten years ago. As a consequence of this analogy, a large number of strongly correlated quantum Hall-type states have been predicted to occur in rotating Bose systems, and suggestions have been made how to manipulate and observe their fractional quasiparticle excitations. Due to a very rapid development in experimental techniques over the past years, experiments on BEC now appear to be close to reaching the quantum Hall regime. This paper reviews the theoretical and experimental work done to date in exploring quantum Hall physics in cold bosonic gases. Future perspectives are discussed briefly, in particular the idea of exploiting some of these strongly correlated states in the context of topological quantum computing.