Synthesized magnetic field of a sawtooth superradiance lattice in Bose–Einstein condensates

Abstract

Ultracold atoms have become one of the most exciting platforms to synthesize novel condensed matter physics. Here we realize a sawtooth superradiance lattice in Bose–Einstein condensates and investigate its chiral edge currents. Based on one-dimensional superradiance lattice (SL) in standing wave-coupled electromagnetically induced transparency, a far-detuned standing-wave field is introduced to synthesize a magnetic field. The relative spatial phase between the two standing-wave coupling fields introduce a magnetic flux in the sawtooth loop transitions of the lattice. This flux determines the moving direction of excitations created in the SL and results in nonsymmetric reflectivities when the SL is probed in two opposite directions. Our work demonstrates an in situ technique to synthesize and detect artificial gauge field in cold atoms.