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arXiv:1904.00220 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Topological polarons, quasiparticle invariants, and their detection in one-dimensional symmetry-protected phases

Fabian Grusdt, Norman Y. Yao, Eugene Demler

Published Aug 12, 2019• 26 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In the presence of symmetries, one-dimensional quantum systems can exhibit topological order, which in many cases can be characterized by a quantized value of the many-body geometric Zak or Berry phase. We establish that this topological Zak phase is directly related to the Zak phase of an elementary quasiparticle excitation in the system. By considering various systems, we establish this connection for a number of different interacting phases including the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, $p$-wave topological superconductors, and the Haldane chain. Crucially, in contrast to the bulk many-body Zak phase associated with the ground state of such systems, the topological invariant associated with quasiparticle excitations (above this ground state) exhibits a more natural route for direct experimental detection. To this end, we build upon recent work [F. Grusdt, et al., Nat. Commun. 7, 11994 (2016)] and demonstrate that mobile quantum impurities can be used, in combination with Ramsey interferometry and Bloch oscillations, to directly measure these quasiparticle topological invariants. Finally, a concrete experimental realization of our protocol for dimerized Mott insulators in ultracold atomic systems is discussed and analyzed.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.100.075126

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In the presence of symmetries, one-dimensional quantum systems can exhibit topological order, which in many cases can be characterized by a quantized value of the many-body geometric Zak or Berry phase. We establish that this topological Zak phase is directly related to the Zak phase of an elementary quasiparticle excitation in the system. By considering various systems, we establish this connection for a number of different interacting phases including the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, ppp-wave topological superconductors, and the Haldane chain. Crucially, in contrast to the bulk many-body Zak phase associated with the ground state of such systems, the topological invariant associated with quasiparticle excitations (above this ground state) exhibits a more natural route for direct experimental detection. To this end, we build upon recent work [F. Grusdt, et al., Nat. Commun. 7, 11994 (2016)] and demonstrate that mobile quantum impurities can be used, in combination with Ramsey interferometry and Bloch oscillations, to directly measure these quasiparticle topological invariants. Finally, a concrete experimental realization of our protocol for dimerized Mott insulators in ultracold atomic systems is discussed and analyzed.
Topological quantum phases cannot be characterized by Ginzburg-Landau type order parameters, and are instead described by non-local topological invariants. Experimental platforms capable of realizing such exotic states now include synthetic many-body systems such as ultracold atoms or photons. Unique tools available in these systems enable a new characterization of strongly correlated many-body states. Here we propose a general scheme for detecting topological order using interferometric measurements of elementary excitations. The key ingredient is the use of mobile impurities that bind to quasiparticles of a host many-body system. Specifically, we show how fractional charges can be probed in the bulk of fractional quantum Hall systems. We demonstrate that combining Ramsey interference with Bloch oscillations can be used to measure Chern numbers characterizing the dispersion of individual quasiparticles, which gives a direct probe of their fractional charges. Possible extensions of our method to other many-body systems, such as spin liquids, are conceivable.
Many-body topological invariants, as quantized highly nonlocal correlators of the many-body wave function, are at the heart of the theoretical description of many-body topological quantum phases, including symmetry-protected and symmetry-enriched topological phases. Here, we propose and analyze a universal toolbox of measurement protocols to reveal many-body topological invariants of phases with global symmetries, which can be implemented in state-of-the-art experiments with synthetic quantum systems, such as Rydberg atoms, trapped ions, and superconducting circuits. The protocol is based on extracting the many-body topological invariants from statistical correlations of randomized measurements, implemented with local random unitary operations followed by site-resolved projective measurements. We illustrate the technique and its application in the context of the complete classification of bosonic symmetry-protected topological phases in one dimension, considering in particular the extended Su-Schrieffer-Heeger spin model, as realized with Rydberg tweezer arrays.
We introduce a classification of symmetry-protected topological phases applicable to stationary states of open systems based on a generalization of the many-body polarization. The polarization can be used to probe topological properties of noninteracting and interacting closed and open systems and remains a meaningful quantity even in the presence of moderate particle-number fluctuations. As examples, we discuss two open-system versions of a topological Thouless pump in the steady state of one-dimensional lattices driven by Markovian reservoirs. In an analogous unitary system, the Su-Shrieffer-Heeger model, symmetries enforce a quantization of the geometric Zak phase, which acts as a topological invariant. Introducing a further degree of freedom, a nontrivial winding of the phase can be observed upon cyclic variations of parameters. Associated with this is a quantization or, respectively, a winding of the polarization corresponding to a quantized transport (Thouless pump). We here show that in the open system, where the Zak phase loses its meaning, the same symmetries enforce a quantization and more generally a winding of the generalized many-body polarization. These features are shown to be robust against Hamiltonian perturbations as well as homogeneous dephasing and particle losses.
We establish a quantitative bulk-boundary correspondence in interacting topological insulators by relating many-body topological invariants to characteristic degeneracy structures in the entanglement spectrum. Focusing on generalized Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chains with higher winding number, we construct a gauge-invariant many-body winding invariant based on Pancharatnam geometric phases that remains well defined in the presence of interactions. We show that this invariant uniquely determines the low-lying entanglement-spectrum degeneracy, which exhibits a universal 4ν4^ν4ν scaling with the winding number ννν, providing a concrete formulation of bulk-boundary correspondence beyond single-particle topology. Using exact diagonalization, we demonstrate the robustness of this correspondence under interactions and symmetry-preserving disorder, and identify inversion symmetry as a minimal protecting symmetry that stabilizes both the quantization of the invariant and the associated entanglement degeneracies. Our results unify geometric-phase invariants and entanglement diagnostics within a many-body framework and provide a route to identifying interacting topological phases beyond band theory.
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Topological superconductors in one spatial dimension exhibiting a single Majorana bound state at each end are distinguished from trivial gapped systems by a Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ topological invariant. Originally, this invariant was calculated by Kitaev in terms of the Pfaffian of the Majorana representation of the Hamiltonian: The sign of this Pfaffian divides the set of all gapped quadratic forms of Majorana fermions into two inequivalent classes. In the more familiar Bogoliubov de Gennes mean-field description of superconductivity, an emergent particle-hole symmetry gives rise to a quantized Zak-Berry phase, the value of which is also a topological invariant. In this work, we explicitly show the equivalence of these two formulations by relating both of them to the phase winding of the transformation matrix that brings the Majorana representation matrix of the Hamiltonian into its Jordan normal form.