Publication: Realistic time-reversal invariant topological insulators with neutral atoms
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Publication Date
2010-12-16
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American Physical Society
Abstract
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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© 2010 The American Physical Society. N. G. thanks the F.R.S-F.N.R.S. I. S. and P. N. are supported by ONR N00014-09-1-1025A and 70NANB7H6138, Am 001 by NIST. A. B. and M.-A. M.- D. thank FIS2009-10061, CAM QUITEMAD, FET-7 PICC, GICC-910758, and FPU. M. L. thanks FIS2008- 00784, QOIT, NAMEQUAM, QUAGATUA, and the Humboldt Foundation. I. B. S. is supported by the ARO with funds from the DARPA OLE Program, and the NSF through the PFC at JQI.