Exploring Ultracold Atoms in Non-Abelian Gauge Potentials

The motion of ultracold, multilevel atoms in spatially varying laser fields can generate non-Abelian gauge potentials, if two or more of the dressed states are degenerate. We examine the spectral and other exotic characteristics of ultracold atoms moving in such non-Abelian gauge potentials, with a view to understanding phenomena like symmetry breaking and non-Abelian Berry phase. Our work is motivated by numerous proposals to create non-Abelian gauge fields in cold atom experiments.