Topological Insulators and Metals in Atomic Optical Lattices

Published

May 28, 2009

Author(s)

Tudor Stanescu, Victor Galitski, Jay Vaishnav, Charles W. Clark, Sankar Das Sarma

Abstract

We propose the realization of topological quantum states with cold atoms trapped in an optical lattice. We discuss an experimental setup that generates a two-dimensional hexagonal lattice in the presence of a light-induced periodic vector potential, which represents a realization of the Haldane model with cold atoms. We determine theoretically the conditions necessary for observing the topological states and show that two of the key conditions are: 1) the realization of sharp boundaries and 2) the minimization of any smoothly varying component of the confining potential. We argue that, unlike their condensed matter counterparts, cold atom topological quantum states can be i) seen , by mapping out the characteristic chiral edge states, and ii) controlled, by controlling the periodic vector potential and the properties of the confining potential.

Citation

Physical Review Letters

Volume

79

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

graphene, optical lattices, quantum spin Hall effect, spin-orbit interaction, topological insulators

Citation

Stanescu, T. , Galitski, V. , Vaishnav, J. , Clark, C. and Das Sarma, S. (2009), Topological Insulators and Metals in Atomic Optical Lattices, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=901533 (Accessed October 26, 2025)