Non-abelian FQHE with cold atoms

New in PRL:

Non-Abelian Optical Lattices: Anomalous Quantum Hall Effect and Dirac Fermions
Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 035301 (2009)
N. Goldman,1 A. Kubasiak,2,3 A. Bermudez,4 P. Gaspard,1 M. Lewenstein,2,5 and M. A. Martin-Delgado4

Abstract: We study the properties of an ultracold Fermi gas loaded in an optical square lattice and subjected to an external and classical non-Abelian gauge field. We show that this system can be exploited as an optical analogue of relativistic quantum electrodynamics, offering a remarkable route to access the exotic properties of massless Dirac fermions with cold atoms experiments. In particular, we show that the underlying Minkowski space-time can also be modified, reaching anisotropic regimes where a remarkable anomalous quantum Hall effect and a squeezed Landau vacuum could be observed.

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This is an interesting proposal but I'm a little skeptical about its _actual_ realizability. The basic idea behind imposing the gauge fields is to drive rather involved sequences of transitions in multilevel atoms, as outlined, e.g., here:

Non-Abelian Gauge Potentials for Ultracold Atoms with Degenerate Dark States
Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 010404 (2005)
J. Ruseckas1,2, G. Juzeliūnas1, P. Öhberg3, and M. Fleischhauer2

Abstract: We show that the adiabatic motion of ultracold, multilevel atoms in spatially varying laser fields can give rise to effective non-Abelian gauge fields if degenerate adiabatic eigenstates of the atom-laser interaction exist. A pair of such degenerate dark states emerges, e.g., if laser fields couple three internal states of an atom to a fourth common one under pairwise two-photon-resonance conditions. For this so-called tripod scheme we derive general conditions for truly non-Abelian gauge potentials and discuss special examples. In particular we show that using orthogonal laser beams with orbital angular momentum an effective magnetic field can be generated that has a monopole component.

It feels like it'd be pretty hard to separate out the cond-mat effect one is looking for, i.e. the FQHE, from all the atomic physics details.