Route to observing topological edge modes in ultracold fermions

Abstract

We show how to exploit the rich hyperfine structure of fermionic alkali atoms to produce a quasi-1D topological superfluid while avoiding excessive heating from off-resonant scattering. We model interacting fermions where four hyperfine states are coupled by a variety of optical and microwave fields. We calculate the local density of states in a trap, finding regimes with zero energy topological edge modes. Heating rates in this system are significantly suppressed compared to simple Raman-induced spin-orbit coupling approaches.

6 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Topological Insulators with Inversion Symmetry
• Vortices and Superfluidity in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
• Spin-orbit coupling in quantum gases
• Spin-Injection Spectroscopy of a Spin-Orbit Coupled Fermi Gas
• Three-body recombination in a three-state Fermi gas with widely tunable interactions
• Precise characterization of ^6Li Feshbach resonances using trap-sideband resolved RF spectroscopy of weakly bound molecules
• Majorana fermions in one-dimensional spin-orbit coupled Fermi gases
• Magnetic field dependence of Raman coupling in Alkali atoms
• Manipulating Majorana fermions in one-dimensional spin-orbit coupled atomic Fermi gases