Descripción del proyecto
Nuevos datos sobre los comportamientos de materiales exóticos
Sobre la base de conceptos desarrollados en los años setenta y ochenta del siglo pasado, la descripción teórica de las fases topológicas de la materia ganó el Premio Nobel de Física en 2016. Estos estados cuánticos exóticos ahora pueden modificarse y poseen propiedades robustas interesantes. Sin embargo, todavía se necesita un conocimiento profundo de su comportamiento, en particular en presencia de desorden e interacciones. El proyecto financiado con fondos europeos DInTopF se centra en los sistemas de Floquet (sistemas impulsados por periodicidad en los que pueden surgir estados cuánticos de la materia) para alcanzar este objetivo. El equipo del proyecto estudiará el efecto del desorden y las interacciones sobre sistemas topológicos artificiales de Floquet aplicados con átomos ultrafríos para obtener más información sobre las propiedades de los materiales topológicos.
Objetivo
This project aims at studying the topological properties of ultracold atoms in a periodically-driven honeycomb optical lattice in the presence of disorder and interactions. It relies on an already-existing experimental setup that can routinely create topological Floquet phases with weakly-interacting bosonic potassium atoms. The development of several technical tools will allow for the investigation of yet-unexplored topological phases of matter and bring solutions to the inherent heating due to the periodic driving.
A first task is the direct observation of topological edge states and the realization of a Chern number 2 topological phase. This requires the implementation of a box potential and a better control of the laser beams providing the optical lattice. It will provide for the first time a complete picture of the bulk-edge correspondence and of the phase diagram of Floquet systems.
A second set of experiments involves the setting of a disorder potential, and will bring into light the interplay between topology and disorder in periodically-driven systems. In particular the existence of disorder-induced topological phases such as the anomalous Floquet Anderson insulator will be demonstrated. In this phase, the bulk is fully localized and topologically-protected edge states do exist.
In the last part of the project, a vertical confinement will be implemented, and it will be combined with the tuning of interactions with a Feshbach resonance to bring the system to a strongly-interacting regime. There, interesting phases of matter can be explored, such as a fermionization of the gas loaded in a so-called moat band. More strikingly, a topological many-body-localized Floquet phase can be realized, where the strongly-interacting particles undergo a periodic driving, but are resilient to heating while supporting a topological edge state.
Ámbito científico
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MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinador
80539 Muenchen
Alemania