Realistic time-reversal invariant topological insulators with neutral atoms
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....
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| Published in: | Physical review letters Vol. 105; no. 25; p. 255302 |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
United States
17-12-2010
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | 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 multiband system has a large parameter space exhibiting a variety of quantum phase transitions between topological and normal insulating phases. Because of their remarkable versatility, cold-atom systems are ideally suited to realize topological states of matter and drive the development of topological quantum computing. |
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| Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 0031-9007 1079-7114 |
| DOI: | 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.255302 |