Recent developments in physics of synthetic dimensions
Tomoki Ozawa (Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan)
The idea of synthetic dimensions is to use non-spatial degrees of freedom as if they are spatial dimensions to simulate high-dimensional Hamiltonians in low-dimensional physical platforms. The idea was originally proposed in ultracold atoms to use spin degrees of freedom as an additional dimension to realize topological Hamiltonians. The concept of synthetic dimensions was soon exported to the realm of photonics. Since then, the idea of synthetic dimensions has been successfully employed in both ultracold atoms and photonics to simulate various Hamiltonians of interest, especially topologically nontrivial Hamiltonians. In this talk, I will give an overview of the physics of synthetic dimensions, starting from its motivation and covering some of the most recent developments.Â