Realistic Time-Reversal Invariant Topological Insulators With Neutral Atoms

Abstract

We lay out an experiment to realize time-reversal invariant topological insulators in alkali atomic gases. We introduce an original method to synthesize a gauge field in the near-field of an atom-chip, which effectively mimics the effects of spin-orbit coupling and produces quantum spin-Hall states. We also propose a feasible scheme to engineer sharp boundaries where the hallmark edge states are localized. Our multi-band system has a large parameter space exhibiting a variety of quantum phase transitions between topological and normal insulating phases. Due to their remarkable versatility, cold-atom systems are ideally suited to realize topological states of matter and drive the development of topological quantum computing.

4 pages, 4 figures, Accepted in Phys. Rev. Lett. (Nov 2010)

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Cited by in corpus (25)

• High temperature fractional quantum Hall states
• Non-Abelian gauge fields and topological insulators in shaken optical lattices
• Topological Phases for Fermionic Cold Atoms on the Lieb Lattice
• Correlation effects in two-dimensional topological insulators
• Direct imaging of topological edge states in cold-atom systems
• Topological orbital ladders
• Manipulating Topological Edge Spins in One-Dimensional Optical Lattice
• Detecting Chiral Edge States in the Hofstadter Optical Lattice
• Chiral Rashba spin textures in ultra-cold Fermi gases
• Rydberg-Atom Quantum Simulation and Chern Number Characterization of a Topological Mott Insulator
• Time-Reversal-Invariant Hofstadter-Hubbard Model with Ultracold Fermions
• Anomalous Hall Effects of Light and Chiral Edge Modes on the Kagome Lattice
• Topological phases in a two-dimensional lattice: Magnetic field versus spin-orbit coupling
• Adiabatic continuation of Fractional Chern Insulators to Fractional Quantum Hall States
• Effects of Smooth Boundaries on Topological Edge Modes in Optical Lattices
• Measuring topology in a laser-coupled honeycomb lattice: From Chern insulators to topological semi-metals
• Quantum anomalous Hall states in the $p$-orbital honeycomb optical lattices
• Topology-induced phase transitions in quantum spin Hall lattices
• Spin Susceptibility and Helical Magnetic Orders at the Edges/Surfaces of Topological Insulators Due to Fermi Surface Nesting
• Topological Invariant and Quantum Spin Models from Magnetic π Fluxes in Correlated Topological Insulators
• Change of an insulator's topological properties by a Hubbard interaction
• Identifying topological edge states in 2D optical lattices using light scattering
• Controlling Transport of Ultra-Cold Atoms in 1D Optical Lattices with Artificial Gauge Fields
• Topological transport in a spin-orbit coupled bosonic Mott insulator
• Energy spectra of two interacting fermions with spin-orbit coupling in a harmonic trap