Experimental realization of a two-dimensional synthetic spin-orbit coupling in ultracold Fermi gases

Understand

Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is central to many physical phenomena, including fine structures of atomic spectra and quantum topological matters.

• Whereas SOC is in general fixed in a physical system, atom-laser interaction provides physicists a unique means to create and control synthetic SOC for ultracold atoms \cite{Dalibard}.
• Though significant experimental progresses have been made, a bottleneck in current studies is the lack of a two-dimensional (2D) synthetic SOC, which is crucial for realizing high-dimensional topological matters.
• Here, we report the experimental realization of 2D SOC in ultracold $^{40}$K Fermi gases using three lasers, each of which dresses one atomic hyperfine spin state.