Cold-atom Quantum Simulation of Ultrafast Phenomena, Phasonic Spectroscopy, and Anyons

We present experiments using degenerate strontium atoms for the quantum emulation of ultrafast dynamics, quasiperiodic many-body systems, and anyonic modes in the Kitaev chain. Trapped atoms subjected to a time-varying force field are used to emulate the ultrafast dynamics of electrons or nuclei in a binding potential. This enables the study of attosecond or femtosecond phenomena in atoms or molecules exposed to the electric field of a pulsed laser. Separately, we study the dynamical response of atoms in a quasiperiodic bichromatic lattice to rapid modulation of the phason degree of freedom. Such excitations are typically frozen out due to strain in solid-state quasicrystals; these measurements thus represent a new spectroscopic probe of quasicrystals which is inaccessible to traditional experiments. Finally, we discuss a technique for cold-atom quantum emulation of the Kitaev chain Hamiltonian, with the goal of realizing a cold-atom system which features Majorana fermions with anyonic quantum statistics.