I will present the results of recent experiments performed with multicomponent 173Yb Fermi gases in optical lattices, in the presence of strong atom-atom interactions and coherent driving between different internal states.
I will discuss the realization of interacting SU(N) Fermi-Hubbard systems, where the addition of a coherent Raman coupling between different spin states is used to induce a controlled breaking of the SU(N) global interaction symmetry. This explicit symmetry-breaking action is shown to favour Mott localization and determines the onset of a flavour-selective behavior. I will discuss the experimental results and the connection with the physics of strongly correlated materials, where a similar orbital-selective behavior arises from the coupling of different electronic orbitals.
I will also discuss recent experiments where we have measured the Hall conductivity in interacting synthetic ladders obtained from a momentum-dependent Raman coupling, which simulates the presence of an external magnetic field for effectively charged particles. I will show a strong dependence of the Hall response upon changing atom-atom interactions and show the emergence of a universal regime in the strongly interacting limit.