Realistic Time-Reversal Invariant Topological Insulators With Neutral Atoms

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel experimental setup using alkali atomic gases on atom-chips to realize time-reversal invariant topological insulators, enabling the study of quantum spin-Hall states and phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to synthesize gauge fields in cold atoms that mimic spin-orbit coupling, facilitating the realization of topological insulators with sharp boundaries.

Findings

Successful scheme to generate gauge fields in cold atoms

Identification of multiple quantum phase transitions

Feasibility of engineering edge states in cold-atom systems

Abstract

We lay out an experiment to realize time-reversal invariant topological insulators in alkali atomic gases. We introduce an original method to synthesize a gauge field in the near-field of an atom-chip, which effectively mimics the effects of spin-orbit coupling and produces quantum spin-Hall states. We also propose a feasible scheme to engineer sharp boundaries where the hallmark edge states are localized. Our multi-band system has a large parameter space exhibiting a variety of quantum phase transitions between topological and normal insulating phases. Due to their remarkable versatility, cold-atom systems are ideally suited to realize topological states of matter and drive the development of topological quantum computing.