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arXiv:1502.07350 · Physical Review A

Tunable Chern insulator with optimally shaken lattices

Albert Verdeny, Florian Mintert

Published Dec 9, 2015• 20 citations
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Abstract

Driven optical lattices permit the engineering of effective dynamics with well-controllable tunneling properties. By specifically designing polychromatic driving forces, we describe how an optimal realization of a tunable Chern insulator can be achieved with a system of interacting particles on a shaken hexagonal lattice. Its implementation does not require shallow lattices and favors the study of strongly correlated phases with nontrivial topology.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.92.063615

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Driven optical lattices permit the engineering of effective dynamics with well-controllable tunneling properties. By specifically designing polychromatic driving forces, we describe how an optimal realization of a tunable Chern insulator can be achieved with a system of interacting particles on a shaken hexagonal lattice. Its implementation does not require shallow lattices and favors the study of strongly correlated phases with nontrivial topology.
Periodically driven quantum systems offer an exceptional platform for quantum simulations due to the possibility to approximate their dynamics in terms of time-independent effective Hamiltonians. This, together with the recent experimental advances, has situated driven systems at center stage of engineered quantum-mechanical devices. The aim of this thesis is to develop theoretical methods in order to design optimal quantum simulations with driven systems. By applying the derived tools to experimentally relevant models, the applicability and significance of the methods are furthermore demonstrated. First, we introduce a method to derive accurate effective Hamiltonians by merging two seemingly unrelated tools: Floquet theory and flow equations. With this, the required analytical identification of the effective Hamiltonian in terms of the system's parameters is achieved. Second, we identify structural properties that determine the accessible effective dynamics of a system of particles on shaken optical lattices, which is arguably one of the most remarkable systems for many-body quantum simulations. In particular, we identify fundamental symmetries of the underlying lattice geometry that determine the emergence of new tunneling processes. Third, we develop an optimal control scheme to design polychromatic driving protocols that optimally simulate specifically targeted dynamics. We apply this scheme to demonstrate an optimal realization of Raman transitions with a Lambda system, a building block in many quantum simulations. Then, we employ it to implement a topological Chern insulator through suitably engineering the geometry-dependent tunneling of particles on a shaken hexagonal lattice. Hereby, a realistic route to experimentally test strongly-correlated topological phases of matter is provided. By determining structural properties of driven systems and suitable driving protocols, the methods described in this thesis open substantial possibilities for the development of optimal quantum simulations and, ultimately, reliable quantum technologies.
Strongly correlated quantum systems can exhibit exotic behavior controlled by topology. We predict that the ν = 1/2 fractional Chern insulator arises naturally in a two-dimensional array of driven, dipolar-interacting spins. As a specific implementation, we analyze how to prepare and detect synthetic gauge potentials for the rotational excitations of ultracold polar molecules trapped in a deep optical lattice. With the motion of the molecules pinned, under certain conditions, these rotational excitations form a fractional Chern insulating state. We present a detailed experimental blueprint for its realization and demonstrate that the implementation is consistent with near-term capabilities. Prospects for the realization of such phases in solid-state dipolar systems are discussed as are their possible applications.
We propose to realize and observe Chern Kondo insulators in an optical superlattice with laser-assisted s and p orbital hybridization and a synthetic gauge field, which can be engineered based on the recent cold atom experiments. Considering a double-well square optical lattice, the localized s orbitals are decoupled from itinerant p bands and are driven into a Mott insulator due to the strong Hubbard interaction. Raman laser beams are then applied to induce tunnelings between s and p orbitals, and generate a staggered flux simultaneously. Because of the strong Hubbard interaction of s orbital states, we predict the existence of a critical Raman laser-assisted coupling, beyond which the Kondo screening is achieved, and then a fully gapped Chern Kondo phase emerges, with the topology characterized by integer Chern numbers. Being a strongly correlated topological state, the Chern Kondo phase is different from the single-particle quantum anomalous Hall state, and can be identified by measuring the band topology and double occupancy of s orbitals. The experimental realization and detection of the predicted Chern Kondo insulator are also proposed.
We show theoretically that periodically driven systems with short range Hubbard interactions offer a feasible platform to experimentally realize fractional Chern insulator states. We exemplify the procedure for both the driven honeycomb and the square lattice, where we derive the effective steady state band structure of the driven system by using the Floquet theory and subsequently study the interacting system with exact numerical diagonalization. The fractional Chern insulator state equivalent to the 1/3 Laughlin state appears at 7/12 total filling (1/6 filling of the upper band). The state also features spontaneous ferromagnetism and is thus an example of the spontaneous breaking of a continuous symmetry along with a topological phase transition. We discuss light-driven graphene and shaken optical lattices as possible experimental systems that can realize such a state.
We propose a simple method to simulate and detect topological insulators with cold atoms trapped in a one-dimensional bichromatic optical lattice subjected to a time-periodic modulation. The tight-binding form of this shaken system is equivalent to the periodically driven Aubry-Andre model. We demonstrate that this model can be mapped into a two-dimensional Chern insulator model, whose energy spectrum hosts a topological phase within an experimentally accessible parameter regime. By tuning the laser phase adiabatically, such one-dimensional system constitutes a natural platform to realize topological particle pumping. We show that the Chern number characterizing the topological features of this system can be measured by detecting the density shift after one cycle of pumping.