Particle number fractionalization of a one-dimensional atomic Fermi gas with synthetic spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

We propose an experimental scheme to simulate the fractionalization of particle number by using a one-dimensional spin-orbit coupled ultracold fermionic gas. The wanted spin-orbit coupling, a kink-like potential, and a conjugation-symmetry-breaking mass term are properly constructed by laser-atom interactions, leading to an effective low-energy relativistic Dirac Hamiltonian with a topologically nontrivial background field. The designed system supports a localized soliton excitation with a fractional particle number that is generally irrational and experimentally tunable, providing a direct realization of the celebrated generalized-Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model. In addition, we elaborate on how to detect the induced soliton mode with the FPN in the system.

9 pages, 3 figures. Accepted by Phys. Rev. A

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Topological phases, topological flat bands, and topological excitations in a one-dimensional dimerized lattice with spin-orbit coupling
• Dynamical generation of dark solitons in spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
• Simulation and measurement of the fractional particle number in one-dimensional optical lattices
• Topological effects and particle-physics analogies beyond the massless Dirac-Weyl fermion in graphene nanorings
• Quantum simulation of topologically protected states using directionally unbiased linear-optical multiports
• Self-adjoint Dirac type Hamiltonians in one space dimension with a mass jump