The report period covers the first 9 months of the ToPIKS activity. During this time, we implemented the quantum simulation of the chiral BF theory in the continuum, a topological field theory which corresponds to the 1D dimensional reduction of the celebrated Chern-Simons theory. The Chern-Simons theory is a powerful theory able to describe anyons within a simple effective picture of weakly interacting particles. Its full implementation in the continuum represents a milestone goal to the scientific community, as it would allow the investigation of anyons in a weakly interacting setting, and allow testing possible detection schemes and understanding their physics without the need for strong correlations.
In ToPIKs, we focused on the more accessible goal of performing a quantum simulation of the 1D dimentional reduction of the Abelian Chern-Simons theory, i.e. the chiral BF theory. In this way, we became familiar with the physics of anyons via their field-theoretical description. This work has provided us with very valuable theoretical insight on topological field theories, which lie at the basis of effective descriptions of topological systems with anyonic excitations such as the one that the project ToPIKS aims to realize (objective 3).
In parallel to this work, we tackled a new laser setup design for the experimental platform available at ICFO towards the production of ultracold fermionic gases of 40K, on top of the currently available 39K Bose-Einstein Condensates.
The applied strategy allowed us keeping the experimental apparatus and toolbox of techniques fully functional without relying in a complete reconstruction of the experiment which would have been complicated to carry out with the limitations of the supply chain caused by the COVID pandemic outbreak.
The results on the quantum simulation of topological field theories obtained during the report period are the subject of two publications. Moreover, they were presented by the Fellowship beneficiary E. Neri in three national and international workshops and in one international conference. The beneficiary E. Neri also participated during the project to the formation of two PhD student, and she was involved in a direct knowledge-transfer activity by personally supervising an undergraduate conducting a Summer Student Fellowship project at ICFO.
