Topological Phases of Fermions in Kagome Optical Lattices

V. W. Scarola, Chuanchang Zeng, Tudor D. Stanescu +2 more

Krishanu Roychowdhury, Subhro Bhattacharjee, Frank Pollmann

Chunlei Qu, Ming Gong, Chuanwei Zhang

S.R. Ghazanfari, Hosein Mokhtari

Gia-Wei Chern, Chih-Chun Chien, Massimiliano Di Ventra

Motivated by recent advances in the realization of complex two-dimensional optical lattices, we investigate theoretically the quantum transport of ultracold fermions in an optical kagome lattice. In particular, we focus on its extensively degenerate localized states (flat band). By loading fermions in a partial region of the lattice and depleting the mobile atoms at the far boundary of the initially unoccupied region, we find a dynamically generated flat-band insulator, which is also a population-inverted state. We further show that inclusion of weak repulsion leads to a dynamical stripe phase for two-component fermions in a similar setup. Finally, by preparing a topological insulating state in a partially occupied kagome lattice, we find that the topological chiral current decays but exhibits an interesting oscillating dynamics during the nonequilibrium transport. Given the broad variety of lattice geometries supporting localized or topological states, our work suggests new possibilities for using geometrical effects and their dynamics in atomtronic devices.

Hoi-Yin Hui, Mengsu Chen, Sumanta Tewari +1 more

Synthetic fields applied to ultracold quantum gases can realize topological phases that transcend conventional Bose and Fermi-liquid paradigms. Raman laser beams in particular are under scrutiny as a route to create synthetic fields in neutral gases to mimic ordinary magnetic and electric fields acting on charged matter. Yet external laser beams can impose heating and losses that make cooling into many-body topological phases challenging. We propose that atomic or molecular dipoles placed in optical lattices can realize a topological phase without synthetic fields by placing them in certain frustrated lattices. We use numerical modeling on a specific example to show that the interactions between dipolar fermions placed in a kagome optical lattice spontaneously break time-reversal symmetry to lead to a topological Mott insulator, a chiral topological phase generated entirely by interactions. We estimate realistic entropy and trapping parameters to argue that this intriguing phase of matter can be probed with quantum gases using a combination of recently implemented technologies.