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arXiv:1902.10304 · New Journal of Physics

Creutz ladder in a resonantly shaken 1D optical lattice

Jin Hyoun Kang, Jeong Ho Han, Yong-il Shin

Published Dec 13, 2019• 85 citations
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Abstract

Abstract We report the experimental realization of a Creutz ladder for ultracold fermionic atoms in a resonantly driven 1D optical lattice. The two-leg ladder consists of the two lowest orbital states of the optical lattice and the cross inter-leg links are generated via two-photon resonant coupling between the orbitals by periodic lattice shaking. The characteristic pseudo-spin winding structure in the energy bands of the ladder system is demonstrated using momentum-resolved Ramsey-type interferometric measurements. We discuss a two-tone driving method to extend the inter-leg link control and propose a topological charge pumping scheme for the Creutz ladder system.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/ab61d7

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Abstract We report the experimental realization of a Creutz ladder for ultracold fermionic atoms in a resonantly driven 1D optical lattice. The two-leg ladder consists of the two lowest orbital states of the optical lattice and the cross inter-leg links are generated via two-photon resonant coupling between the orbitals by periodic lattice shaking. The characteristic pseudo-spin winding structure in the energy bands of the ladder system is demonstrated using momentum-resolved Ramsey-type interferometric measurements. We discuss a two-tone driving method to extend the inter-leg link control and propose a topological charge pumping scheme for the Creutz ladder system.
We report the experimental realization of a cross-linked chiral ladder with ultracold fermionic atoms in a 1D optical lattice. In the ladder, the legs are formed by the orbital states of the optical lattice and the complex interleg links are generated by the orbital-changing Raman transitions that are driven by a moving lattice potential superimposed onto the optical lattice. The effective magnetic flux per ladder plaquette is tuned by the spatial periodicity of the moving lattice, and the chiral currents are observed from the asymmetric momentum distributions of the orbitals. The effect of the complex cross-links is demonstrated in quench dynamics by measuring the momentum dependence of the interorbital coupling strength. We discuss the topological phase transition of the chiral ladder system for the variations of the complex cross-links.
We investigate the topological properties of a resonantly shaken one-dimensional optical lattice system, where the lattice position is periodically driven with two harmonic frequencies to generate one- and two-photon couplings between the two lowest orbitals. In a two-band approximation, we numerically show that degenerate edge states appear under a certain driving condition and that the corresponding topological phase is protected by the chiral symmetry of the periodically driven system. The system's micromotion is characterized with oscillating Zak phases and we find that the Zak phases are quantized only at the time when the chiral symmetry condition is explicitly satisfied. Finally, we describe the topological charge pumping effect which arises when the driving parameters are slowly modulated around a critical point, and investigate its adiabaticity with increasing modulation frequency.
The realization of band structures with nontrivial topological properties in an optical lattice is an exciting topic in current studies of ultracold atoms. Here we point out that this lofty goal can be achieved by using a simple scheme of shaking an optical lattice, which is directly applicable in current experiments. The photon-assisted band hybridization leads to the production of an effective spin-orbit coupling, in which the band index represents the pseudospin. When this spin-orbit coupling has finite strengths in multiple directions, nontrivial topological structures emerge in the Brillouin zone, such as topological defects with a winding number of 1 or 2 in a shaken square lattice. The shaken lattice also allows one to study the transition between two band structures with distinct topological properties.
The realization and detection of topological phases with ultracold atomic gases is at the frontier of current theoretical and experimental research. Here, we identify cold atoms in optical ladders subjected to synthetic magnetic fields as readily realizable bridges between one-dimensional spin-orbit (time-reversal) topological insulators and two-dimensional quantum Hall insulators. We reveal three instances of their promising potential: (i) they realize spin-orbit coupling, with the left-right leg degree of freedom playing the role of an effective spin, (ii) their energy bands and eigenstates exactly reproduce the topological chiral edge modes of two-dimensional Chern insulators, and (iii) they can be tailored to realize a topological phase transition from a trivial to a topological insulating phase. We propose realistic schemes to observe the chiral and topological properties of ladder systems with current optical lattice-based experiments. Our findings open a door to the exploration of the physics of the edges of quantum Hall insulators and to the realization of spin-orbit coupling and topological superfluid phases with ultracold atomic gases.
In order to study the interesting interplay between localized and dispersive orbital states in a system of strongly interacting ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, we investigate the possibility to coherently couple the lowest two Bloch bands by means of resonant periodic forcing. For bosons in one dimension we show that a strongly interacting Floquet system can be realized, where at every lattice site two (and only two) near-degenerate orbital states are relevant, whose tunneling matrix elements differ in sign and magnitude. By smoothly tuning both states into resonance, the system is predicted to undergo an orbital-driven Mott-insulator-to-superfluid transition. As a consequence of kinetic frustration, this transition can be either continuous or first order, depending on parameters such as lattice depth and filling.
The Mott insulator and superfluid phase transition is one of the most prominent phenomena in ultracold atoms. We report the observation of a novel 2D quantum phase transition between the Mott insulator and π superfluid in a shaking optical lattice. In the deep optical lattice regime, the lowest S band can be tuned to Mott phase, while the higher px,y bands are itinerant for having larger bandwidth. Through a shaking technique coupling the s-orbital to px,y -orbital states, we experimentally observe the transition between the states of the S and px,y bands, leading to a quantum phase transition from two-dimensional s-orbital Mott phase to the px,y -orbital superfluid which condensed at (π, π) momentum. Using the band-mapping method, we also observe the changes of atomic population in different energy bands during the transition, and the experimental results are well consistent with theoretical expectations.