{"title":"Floquet engineering tunable periodic gauge fields and simulating real topological phases in a cold-alkaline-earth-metal-atom optical lattice","authors":"Wei Wang, Zheng Zhang, Gui-Xin Tang, Tao Wang","doi":"10.1103/physreva.110.023308","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We propose to synthesize tunable periodic gauge fields via Floquet engineering cold-alkaline-earth-metal atoms in one-dimensional optical lattice. The artificial magnetic flux is designed to emerge during the combined process of Floquet photon-assisted tunneling and internal state transitions. By varying the initial phases of the driving protocol, our proposal presents the ability to smoothly tune the periodic flux. Moreover, we demonstrate that the effective two-leg flux ladder model can simulate one typical real topological insulator, which is described by the first Stiefel-Whitney class and protected by the space-inversion–time-reversal symmetry. Benefiting from the long lifetime of excited states of alkaline-earth-metal atoms, our work opens new possibilities for exploiting the physics related to gauge fields, such as topological phases, in the current cold-atom platform.","PeriodicalId":20146,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review A","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Physical Review A","FirstCategoryId":"101","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.110.023308","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Physics and Astronomy","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We propose to synthesize tunable periodic gauge fields via Floquet engineering cold-alkaline-earth-metal atoms in one-dimensional optical lattice. The artificial magnetic flux is designed to emerge during the combined process of Floquet photon-assisted tunneling and internal state transitions. By varying the initial phases of the driving protocol, our proposal presents the ability to smoothly tune the periodic flux. Moreover, we demonstrate that the effective two-leg flux ladder model can simulate one typical real topological insulator, which is described by the first Stiefel-Whitney class and protected by the space-inversion–time-reversal symmetry. Benefiting from the long lifetime of excited states of alkaline-earth-metal atoms, our work opens new possibilities for exploiting the physics related to gauge fields, such as topological phases, in the current cold-atom platform.
期刊介绍:
Physical Review A (PRA) publishes important developments in the rapidly evolving areas of atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics, quantum information, and related fundamental concepts.
PRA covers atomic, molecular, and optical physics, foundations of quantum mechanics, and quantum information, including:
-Fundamental concepts
-Quantum information
-Atomic and molecular structure and dynamics; high-precision measurement
-Atomic and molecular collisions and interactions
-Atomic and molecular processes in external fields, including interactions with strong fields and short pulses
-Matter waves and collective properties of cold atoms and molecules
-Quantum optics, physics of lasers, nonlinear optics, and classical optics