Sundar, BhuvaneshGadway, BryceHazzard, Kaden R.A.2018-07-112018-07-112018Sundar, Bhuvanesh, Gadway, Bryce and Hazzard, Kaden R.A.. "Synthetic dimensions in ultracold polar molecules." <i>Scientific Reports,</i> 8, (2018) Springer Nature: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21699-x.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/102413Synthetic dimensions alter one of the most fundamental properties in nature, the dimension of space. They allow, for example, a real three-dimensional system to act as effectively four-dimensional. Driven by such possibilities, synthetic dimensions have been engineered in ongoing experiments with ultracold matter. We show that rotational states of ultracold molecules can be used as synthetic dimensions extending to many – potentially hundreds of – synthetic lattice sites. Microwaves coupling rotational states drive fully controllable synthetic inter-site tunnelings, enabling, for example, topological band structures. Interactions leads to even richer behavior: when molecules are frozen in a real space lattice with uniform synthetic tunnelings, dipole interactions cause the molecules to aggregate to a narrow strip in the synthetic direction beyond a critical interaction strength, resulting in a quantum string or a membrane, with an emergent condensate that lives on this string or membrane. All these phases can be detected using local measurements of rotational state populations.engThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.Journal articlehttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21699-x