Synthetic electric and magnetic fields for ultracold neutral atoms

We use Raman coupling between magnetic sublevels of a Rb-87 Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) to create an effective vector gauge field for the neutral atoms. They behave as if they were charged particles in a magnetic vector potential. With appropriate spatial gradients and time derivatives of this vector potential we produce synthetic magnetic and electric fields for the atoms. This paper is a brief summary of the presentation made by the first author at ICAP 2010 in Cairns, Australia. It is not intended as a complete report on the research described, nor does it attempt to be a fully referenced documentation of that research and the relevant literature. We do, however, provide references to the published work where a more complete description and more complete references to related literature may be found.