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arXiv:0902.4746 · Physical Review A

Massless Dirac fermions in a square optical lattice

Jing-Min Hou, Wen‐Xing Yang, Xiong-Jun Liu

Published Apr 21, 2009• 63 citations
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Abstract

We propose a scheme to simulate and observe massless Dirac fermions with cold atoms in a square optical lattice. A U(1) adiabatic phase is created by two laser beams for the tunneling of atoms between neighbor lattice sites. Properly adjusting the tunneling phase, we find that the energy spectrum has conical points in per Brillouin zone where band crossing occurs. Near these crossing points the quasiparticles and quasiholes can be considered as massless Dirac fermions. Furthermore, the anisotropic effects of massless Dirac fermions are obtained in the present square lattice model. The Dirac fermions as well as the anisotropic behaviors realized in our system can be experimentally detected with the Bragg spectroscopy technique.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.79.043621

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We propose a scheme to simulate and observe massless Dirac fermions with cold atoms in a square optical lattice. A U(1) adiabatic phase is created by two laser beams for the tunneling of atoms between neighbor lattice sites. Properly adjusting the tunneling phase, we find that the energy spectrum has conical points in per Brillouin zone where band crossing occurs. Near these crossing points the quasiparticles and quasiholes can be considered as massless Dirac fermions. Furthermore, the anisotropic effects of massless Dirac fermions are obtained in the present square lattice model. The Dirac fermions as well as the anisotropic behaviors realized in our system can be experimentally detected with the Bragg spectroscopy technique.
Using ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice, we form a line-centered-square lattice in the condensed-matter physics, where a crossover from massive to massless Dirac fermion behavior can be easily achieved by tuning the laser intensities. The present Dirac fermions satisfy a three-component quantum equation for pseudospin-1 fermions, resulting in a single Dirac cone in the energy spectrum, a flat band touching at the Dirac point, and a vanishing Berry's phase. Interestingly, the massless Dirac fermions here may exhibit an all-angle Klein tunneling; i.e., the barrier is completely transparent for all incident angles.
Dirac points lie at the heart of many fascinating phenomena in condensed matter physics, from massless electrons in graphene to the emergence of conducting edge states in topological insulators. At a Dirac point, two energy bands intersect linearly and the particles behave as relativistic Dirac fermions. In solids, the rigid structure of the material sets the mass and velocity of the particles, as well as their interactions. A different, highly flexible approach is to create model systems using fermionic atoms trapped in an optical lattice, a method which so far has only been applied to explore simple lattice structures. In my talk I will report on the creation of Dirac points with adjustable properties in a tunable honeycomb optical lattice [1]. Using momentum-resolved interband transitions, we observe a minimum band gap inside the Brillouin zone at the position of the Dirac points. We exploit the unique tunability of our lattice potential to adjust the effective mass of the Dirac fermions by breaking the inversion symmetry of the lattice. Moreover, changing the lattice anisotropy allows us to move the position of the Dirac points inside the Brillouin zone. When increasing the anisotropy beyond a critical limit, the two Dirac points merge and annihilate each other. We map out this topological transition in lattice parameter space and find excellent agreement with ab initio calculations. Our results not only pave the way to model materials where the topology of the band structure plays a crucial role, but also provide the possibility to explore many-body phases resulting from the interplay of complex lattice geometries with interactions.
Dirac-Weyl fermions are massless relativistic particles with a well-defined helicity which arise in the context of high-energy physics. Here we propose a quantum simulation of these paradigmatic fermions using multicomponent ultracold atoms in a two-dimensional square optical lattice. We find that laser-assisted spin-dependent hopping, specifically tuned to the (2s+1)(2s+1)(2s+1)-dimensional representations of the su\mathfrak{su}su(2) Lie algebra, directly leads to a regime where the emerging massless excitations correspond to Dirac-Weyl fermions with arbitrary pseudospin sss. We show that this platform hosts two different phases: a semimetallic phase that occurs for half-integer sss, and a metallic phase that contains a flat zero-energy band at integer sss. These phases host a variety of interesting effects, such as a very rich anomalous quantum Hall effect and a remarkable multirefringent Klein tunneling. In addition, we show that these effects are directly related to the number of underlying Dirac-Weyl species and zero modes.
We propose an experimental setup for the observation of quasirelativistic massless fermions. It is based on a T3{\mathcal{T}}_{3}T3​ optical lattice, realized by three pairs of counterpropagating lasers, filled with fermionic cold atoms. We show that in the long wavelength approximation the T3{\mathcal{T}}_{3}T3​ Hamiltonian generalizes the Dirac-Weyl Hamiltonian for the honeycomb lattice, however, with a larger value of the pseudospin S=1S=1S=1. In addition to the Dirac cones, the spectrum includes a dispersionless branch of localized states producing a finite jump in the atomic density. Furthermore, implications for the Landau levels are discussed.
Some important features of the graphene physics can be reproduced by loading ultracold fermionic atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice with honeycomb symmetry and we address here its experimental feasibility. We analyze in great detail the optical lattice generated by the coherent superposition of three coplanar running laser waves with respective angles $2\ensuremath{\pi}/3$. The corresponding band structure displays Dirac cones located at the corners of the Brillouin zone and close to half-filling this system is well described by massless Dirac fermions. We characterize their properties by accurately deriving the nearest-neighbor hopping parameter t0{t}_{0}t0​ as a function of the optical lattice parameters. Our semiclassical instanton method proves in excellent agreement with an exact numerical diagonalization of the full Hamilton operator in the tight-binding regime. We conclude that the temperature range needed to access the Dirac fermions regime is within experimental reach. We also analyze imperfections in the laser configuration as they lead to optical lattice distortions which affect the Dirac fermions. We show that the Dirac cones do survive up to some critical intensity or angle mismatches which are easily controlled in actual experiments. In the tight-binding regime, we predict, and numerically confirm, that these critical mismatches are inversely proportional to the square root of the optical potential strength. We also briefly discuss the interesting possibility of fine tuning the mass of the Dirac fermions by controlling the laser phase in an optical lattice generated by the incoherent superposition of three coplanar independent standing waves with respective angles $2\ensuremath{\pi}/3$.