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arXiv:1112.1800 · Physical Review B

Edge excitations of bosonic fractional quantum Hall phases in optical lattices

Jonas A. Kjäll, Joel E. Moore

Published Jun 20, 2012• 34 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The rapid development of artificial gauge fields in ultracold gases suggests that atomic realization of fractional quantum Hall physics will become experimentally practical in the near future. While it is known that bosons on lattices can support quantum Hall states, the universal edge excitations that provide the most likely experimental probe of the topological order have not been obtained. We find that the edge excitations of an interacting boson lattice model are surprisingly sensitive to interedge hybridization and edge-bulk mixing for some confining potentials. With properly chosen potentials and fluxes, the edge spectrum is surprisingly clear even for small systems with strong lattice effects such as bandwidth. Various fractional quantum Hall phases for bosons can be obtained, and the phases $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$ and $\ensuremath{\nu}=2/3$ have the edge spectra predicted by the chiral Luttinger liquid theory.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.85.235137

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The rapid development of artificial gauge fields in ultracold gases suggests that atomic realization of fractional quantum Hall physics will become experimentally practical in the near future. While it is known that bosons on lattices can support quantum Hall states, the universal edge excitations that provide the most likely experimental probe of the topological order have not been obtained. We find that the edge excitations of an interacting boson lattice model are surprisingly sensitive to interedge hybridization and edge-bulk mixing for some confining potentials. With properly chosen potentials and fluxes, the edge spectrum is surprisingly clear even for small systems with strong lattice effects such as bandwidth. Various fractional quantum Hall phases for bosons can be obtained, and the phases \ensuremathν=1/2\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2\ensuremathν=1/2 and \ensuremathν=2/3\ensuremath{\nu}=2/3\ensuremathν=2/3 have the edge spectra predicted by the chiral Luttinger liquid theory.
Recent theoretical papers have demonstrated the realization of fractional quantum anomalous Hall states (also called fractional Chern insulators) in topological flat band lattice models without an external magnetic field. Such newly proposed lattice systems play a vital role in obtaining a large class of fractional topological phases. Here we report the exact numerical studies of edge excitations for such systems in a disk geometry loaded with hard-core bosons, which will serve as a more viable experimental probe for such topologically ordered states. We find convincing numerical evidence of a series of edge excitations characterized by the chiral Luttinger liquid theory for the bosonic fractional Chern insulators in both the honeycomb disk Haldane model and the kagome-lattice disk model. We further verify these current-carrying chiral edge states by inserting a central flux to test their compressibility.
Edge states of chiral topologically ordered phases are commonly described by chiral Luttinger liquids, effective theories that are exact only in the hydrodynamic limit. Motivated by recent bulk observations of fractional Chern insulators (FCIs) in two-dimensional materials and by synthetic realizations in ultracold atoms, we revisit this framework and quantify deviations from the hydrodynamic limit due to lattice effects. Using a combination of analytical arguments and numerical simulations, we disentangle universal from nonuniversal edge properties. We outline experimental probes in excitonic FCIs and in ultracold atom systems, and in particular propose time-resolved edge spectroscopy to directly access the predicted exponents and velocities.
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The edge of the electronic fractional quantum Hall (FQH) system obeys the law of the chiral Luttinger liquid theory due to its intrinsic topological properties and the relation of bulk-edge correspondence. However, in a realistic experimental system, such as the usual Hall bar setup, the softening of the background confinement potential can induce the reconstruction of the edge spectrum, which breaks the chirality and universality of the FQH edge. The entanglement spectrum (ES) of the FQH ground state has the same counting structure as that of the energy spectrum indicating the topological characters of the quantum state. In this work, we report that the ES can also have an edge reconstruction while sweeping the area of the subsystem in real space cut. Moreover, we found that the critical area of the subsystem matches accurately with the intrinsic building block of the FQH liquids, namely the correlation hole of the FQH liquids. The above results seem to be universal after our study of a series of typical FQH states, such as two Laughlin states at $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/3$ and 1/51/51/5, and the Moore-Read state for $\ensuremath{\nu}=5/2$.
The experimental realization of the Harper-Hofstadter model in ultracold atomic gases has placed fractional states of matter in these systems within reach-a fractional Chern insulator state (FCI) is expected to emerge for sufficiently strong interactions when half-filling the lowest band. The experimental setups naturally allow us to probe the dynamics of this topological state; yet little is known about its out-of-equilibrium properties. We explore, using density matrix renormalization group simulations, the response of the FCI state to spatially localized perturbations. After confirming the static properties of the phase we show that the characteristic, gapless features are clearly visible in the edge dynamics. We find that a local edge perturbation in this model propagates chirally independent of the perturbation strength. This contrasts the behavior of single particle models with counterpropagating edge states, such as the noninteracting Harper-Hofstadter model, where the chirality is manifest only for weak perturbations. Additionally, our simulations show that there is inevitable density leakage from the first row of sites into the bulk, preventing a naive chiral Luttinger theory interpretation of the dynamics.
An interesting route to the realization of topological Chern bands in ultracold atomic gases is through the use of optical flux lattices. These models differ from the tight-binding real-space lattice models of Chern insulators that are conventionally studied in solid-state contexts. Instead, they involve the coherent coupling of internal atomic (spin) states, and can be viewed as tight-binding models in reciprocal space. By changing the form of the coupling and the number NNN of internal spin states, they give rise to Chern bands with controllable Chern number and with nearly flat energy dispersion. We investigate in detail how interactions between bosons occupying these bands can lead to the emergence of fractional quantum Hall states, such as the Laughlin and Moore-Read states. In order to test the experimental realization of these phases, we study their stability with respect to band dispersion and band mixing. We also probe interesting topological phases that emerge in these systems when the Chern number is greater than 1.