Non-abelian anyons from degenerate Landau levels of ultracold atoms in artificial gauge potentials

Abstract

We show that non-abelian potentials acting on ultracold gases with two hyperfine levels can give rise to ground states with non-abelian excitations. We consider a realistic gauge potential for which the Landau levels can be exactly determined: the non-abelian part of the vector potential makes the Landau levels non-degenerate. In the presence of strong repulsive interactions, deformed Laughlin ground states occur in general. However, at the degeneracy points of the Landau levels, non-abelian quantum Hall states appear: these ground states, including deformed Moore-Read states (characterized by Ising anyons as quasi-holes), are studied for both fermionic and bosonic gases.