Exploring interacting bosons in an artificial gauge field

We engineer and investigate strongly correlated many-body states using ultra-cold Rb atoms in an optical lattice. This clean, highly controlled system offers an opportunity to study microscopic quantities of strongly correlated states that are difficult to access in experiments that rely on measurements of a system's bulk properties. Current work is focused on investigating states associated with interactions between bosons in the presence of a magnetic field. To accomplish this, we use a technique based on laser assisted tunneling to implement an artificial gauge field. We construct arbitrary potential landscapes, which enables state preparation by adiabatically transforming the system from a topologically trivial ground state into the strongly correlated target state. We are also able to capture images with single-site resolution. These images provide direct measurements of many-body correlation functions, which are used to reveal insight into the thermodynamic proprieties of the system.