Engineering Time-Reversal Invariant Topological Insulators With Ultra-Cold Atoms

Published

December 16, 2010

Author(s)

Ian B. Spielman, Nathan Goldman, Indubala I. Satija, Predrag Nikolic, Alejandro Bermudez, Miguel A. Martin-Delgado, Maciej Lewenstein

Abstract

Topological insulators are a broad class of unconventional states that respect all symmetries of the system, but have non-trivial transport and topological properties which cannot be defined locally. Until recently, all known realizations of these phases violated time-reversal symmetry, such as the quantum Hall states. However, the discovery of the quantum spin Hall effect in HgTe quantum wells and Bi_{2 Te}d3, demonstrated the existence of novel topological states not rooted in time-reversal violations. Here, we design an experimental realization of time-reversal invariant topological insulators using ultra-cold gases subjected to synthetic SU(2) gauge fields in the near-field of an atom-chip. This system offers a rich playground where a variety of novel quantum phase transitions between topological and normal insulating phases arise in a multi-band scenario. Due to their unprecedented controllability, cold-atom systems are ideally suited to realize topological states of matter, so relevant for strongly correlated materials and quantum computation.

Citation

Nature Physics

Pub Type

Journals

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DOI Link

Keywords

artificial gauge fields, topological insulators, ultracold atoms

Citation

Spielman, I. , , N. , Satija, I. , Nikolic, P. , Bermudez, A. , Martin-Delgado, M. and Lewenstein, M. (2010), Engineering Time-Reversal Invariant Topological Insulators With Ultra-Cold Atoms, Nature Physics, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.255302 (Accessed March 13, 2025)