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arXiv:1308.1972 · Physical Review A

Edge-state instabilities of bosons in a topological band

Ryan Barnett

Published Dec 19, 2013• 66 citations
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Abstract

In this work, we consider the dynamics of bosons in bands with nontrivial topological structure. In particular, we focus on the case where bosons are prepared in a higher-energy band and allowed to evolve. The Bogoliubov theory about the initial state can have a dynamical instability, and we show that it is possible to achieve the interesting situation where the topological edge modes are unstable while all bulk modes are stable. Thus, after the initial preparation, the edge modes will become rapidly populated. We illustrate this with the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model which can be realized with a double-well optical lattice and is perhaps the simplest model with topological edge states. This work provides a direct physical consequence of topological bands whose properties are often not of immediate relevance for the near-equilibrium properties of bosonic systems.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.88.063631

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In this work, we consider the dynamics of bosons in bands with nontrivial topological structure. In particular, we focus on the case where bosons are prepared in a higher-energy band and allowed to evolve. The Bogoliubov theory about the initial state can have a dynamical instability, and we show that it is possible to achieve the interesting situation where the topological edge modes are unstable while all bulk modes are stable. Thus, after the initial preparation, the edge modes will become rapidly populated. We illustrate this with the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model which can be realized with a double-well optical lattice and is perhaps the simplest model with topological edge states. This work provides a direct physical consequence of topological bands whose properties are often not of immediate relevance for the near-equilibrium properties of bosonic systems.
Dynamical instability is an inherent feature of bosonic systems described by the Bogoliubov--de Gennes (BdG) Hamiltonian. Since it causes the BdG system to collapse, it is generally thought that it should be avoided. Recently there has been much effort to harness this instability for the benefit of creating a topological amplifier with stable bulk bands but unstable edge modes which can be populated at an exponentially fast rate. We present a theorem for determining the stability of states with energies sufficiently away from zero, in terms of an unconventional commutator between the number-conserving part and number-nonconserving part of the BdG Hamiltonian. We apply the theorem to a generalization of a model from Galilo et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 245302 (2015)] for creating a topological amplifier in an interacting spin-1 atom system in a honeycomb lattice through a quench process. We use this model to illustrate how the vanishing of the unconventional commutator selects the symmetries for a system so that its bulk states are stable against (weak) pairing interactions. We find that as long as time-reversal symmetry is preserved, our system can act like a topological amplifier, even in the presence of an onsite staggered potential which breaks the inversion symmetry.
Since the experimental realization of synthetic gauge fields for neutral atoms, the simulation of topologically nontrivial phases of matter with ultracold atoms has become a major focus of cold-atom experiments. However, several obvious differences exist between cold-atom and solid-state systems, for instance the small size of the atomic cloud and the smooth confining potential. In this article we show that sharp boundaries are not required to realize quantum Hall or quantum spin Hall physics in optical lattices and, on the contrary, that edge states in a smooth confinement exhibit additional interesting properties, such as spatially resolved splitting and merging of bulk bands and the emergence of robust auxiliary states in bulk gaps to preserve the topological quantum numbers. In addition, we numerically validate that these states are robust against disorder. Finally, we analyze possible detection methods, with a focus on Bragg spectroscopy, to demonstrate that the edge states can be detected and that Bragg spectroscopy can reveal how topological edge states are connected to the different bulk bands.
This thesis presents theoretical work devoted to the manifestation of the edge states of boson topological band insulators in optical lattice experiments with weakly-interacting spinor condensates. Although the investigation is presented mainly on a spin-one Kane-Mele model, many aspects of this thesis can be generalised to other lattice models. One major question this thesis addresses is the relevance of topological edge states in the dynamics of the interacting boson systems. This thesis shows how interactions in quenched spinor condensates can facilitate the manifestation of the edge states of two dimensional topological lattice models. Provided certain quench and symmetry-related conditions are fulfilled, the edge states are found to be populated exponentially fast right after the quench. A growing edge spin current is also described. A preliminary numerical computation for later times suggests a particle redistribution from the edge back into the bulk. The presence of a harmonic potential in optical lattice experiments often obscures the manifestation of the edge states. In relation to this problem, spinor condensates have been considered, and a sharpening of the boundaries is observed in the Thomas-Fermi regime. Moreover, for spin-±1\pm1±1 states, despite the presence of the external potential, one can recover a band structure similar to that of a non-interacting model with hard-wall boundaries. Approximate analytical expressions for the edge-state energies in the presence of a harmonic potential are derived. The results presented in this thesis aim to widen the understanding of the manifestation of boson topological edge states, and are in line with the current experiments with ultracold atoms. The thesis suggests mechanisms of experimentally probing boson topological edge states and their quench dynamics with spinor condensates.
A new understanding of criticality in systems described by quadratic bosonic Hamiltonians (QBHs) ties the emergence of long-range correlations to boundaries of dynamical, not thermodynamical, stability in parameter space. This separation occurs because the solution of the Heisenberg equations of motion is determined by an auxiliary pseudo-Hermitian dynamical system. The boundary points of a region of dynamical stability can be either exceptional points, generically associated with long-range correlations, or Krein collisions, where correlations can be either long- or short-range. We investigate the interplay of this landscape of possibilities with band topology and boundary physics, by relying on both specific examples and general arguments. The examples stem from a two-parameter, thermodynamically unstable family of QBHs obtained from the bosonic Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model by breaking particle conservation while preserving a chiral pseudo-symmetry. As a function of an interpolation parameter, distinct regions emerge within a fixed dynamical-stability phase, which prove to be topologically trivial and nontrivial, respectively. The topological phase transition is a line of Krein collisions, which coincides with the closing of a band gap at zero and causes the localization length of the topologically mandated boundary zero modes to diverge before disappearing. We show that the chiral pseudo-symmetry induces, despite the broken particle-number symmetry, enough structure on its associated dynamical matrices to support a topological classification and a bulk-boundary correspondence, independently of dynamical stability. This strongly suggests that, for non-interacting bosons, topological physics extracted from basic index theory is insensitive to dynamical stability and, a posteriori, criticality.
Topological edge states and Dirac fermions are fascinating phenomena known for fermionic systems. Whether similar phenomena can occur for interacting bosons is an open question in fundamental science. The recent observation of 87^{87}87Rb chiral px±ipyp_x\pm ip_ypx​±ipy​ condensates in a checkerboard optical lattice further raises the question whether a bosonic superfluid can be topological. Here we show that Dirac bosons experiencing a π\piπ Berry flux emerge in the elementary excitation spectra of this experimentally realized Bose system. Tuning a population bias between the observed px+ipyp_x+ip_ypx​+ipy​ and px−ipyp_x-ip_ypx​−ipy​ condensate components opens an energy gap in the bulk, which results in Chern invariant and topologically protected Bogoliubov edge modes. Different from previous topological scenarios that employ the concept of engineered spin-orbit coupling or the equivalent in single-particle Bloch bands, spontaneous chiral orbital order driven by many-body interaction is a crucial ingredient in our finding.
In this Letter, it is shown that interactions can facilitate the emergence of topological edge states of quantum-degenerate bosonic systems in the presence of a harmonic potential. This effect is demonstrated with the concrete model of a hexagonal lattice populated by spin-one bosons under a synthetic gauge field. In fermionic or noninteracting systems, the presence of a harmonic trap can obscure the observation of edge states. For our system with weakly interacting bosons in the Thomas-Fermi regime, we can clearly see a topological band structure with a band gap traversed by edge states. We also find that the number of edge states crossing the gap is increased in the presence of a harmonic trap, and the edge modes experience an energy shift while traversing the first Brillouin zone which is related to the topological properties of the system. We find an analytical expression for the edge-state energies and our comparison with numerical computation shows excellent agreement.