I will talk about the physics of effective 2-, 3-, and 4-body interactions in systems of ultracold neutral atoms where, using magnetic or optical trapping techniques, it is possible to restrict motion to two dimensions (e.g., a plane), one dimension (e.g., a tube), or within a 3D optical lattice potential. I will describe systems with effective interactions that have scale invariance symmetry, describing both the roles of scale symmetry breaking and the connection to non-trivial topological properties. Although this physics has been extensively studied in the two-dimensional case, I will describe the, possibly surprising, ways that the same physics can arise in one-dimensional systems with either effective, local 3-body interactions or with effective, nonlocal, 4-body interactions. Similar physics may be realizable in condensed matter and cavity QED systems.
Philip Johnson
Department of Physics, American University, Washington (USA)
Dr. Philip Johnson received his PhD with the Gravitational Theory Group at the University of Maryland, working on problems at the interaction of general relativity and quantum field theory. From 2000-2004, he was a postdoctoral fellow with the University of Maryland’s superconducting quantum computing group, contributing to early work on phase qubits and high-fidelity quantum gates. From 2004-2006, he was a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), working with the NIST Laser Cooling and Trapping Group on the physics of ultracold atoms. Since moving to American University (AU) in 2006, his research has mostly focused the effective interactions for few-body systems, and he has served as Chair of the Department of Physics, the Associate Dean of Research for the College of Arts and Sciences, and is the director of the Integrated Space Science and Technology Institute (ISSTI), a partnership between AU and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Johnson’s has also served on the executive committee of the Topical Group on Few-Body Systems and Multiparticle Dynamics and was previously a member of the American Physical Society’s (APS) governing council.