Symmetry-Protected Topological Phases in a Rydberg Glass

Abstract

Recent theoretical studies predict that structural disorder, serving as a bridge connecting a crystalline material to an amorphous material, can induce a topological insulator from a trivial phase. However, to experimentally observe such a topological phase transition is very challenging due to the difficulty in controlling structural disorder in a quantum material. Given experimental realization of randomly positioned Rydberg atoms, such a system is naturally suited to studying structural disorder induced topological phase transitions and topological amorphous phases. Motivated by the development, we study topological phases in an experimentally accessible one-dimensional amorphous Rydberg atom chain with random atom configurations. In the single-particle level, we find symmetry-protected topological amorphous insulators and a structural disorder induced topological phase transition, indicating that Rydberg atoms provide an ideal platform to experimentally observe the phenomenon using state-of-the-art technologies. Furthermore, we predict the existence of a gapless symmetry-protected topological phase of interacting bosons in the experimentally accessible system. The resultant many-body topological amorphous phase is characterized by a ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ invariant.

13 pages, 7 figures, including supplemental materials

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Topological Anderson insulators with different bulk states in quasiperiodic chains
• Entanglement filter with Rydberg atoms
• Quantized Topological Anderson-Thouless Pump
• Topological Random Fractals
• Noncrystalline topological superconductors
• Critical and Topological Phases of Dimerized Kitaev Chain in Presence of Quasiperiodic Potential