Particle number fractionalization of a one-dimensional atomic Fermi gas with synthetic spin-orbit coupling

TL;DR

This paper proposes an experimental setup using ultracold fermionic gases with synthetic spin-orbit coupling to realize and detect fractional particle number solitons, demonstrating a tunable topological phenomenon in a controllable quantum system.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental scheme to simulate fractional particle number in a one-dimensional ultracold Fermi gas with engineered spin-orbit coupling and topological features.

Findings

Realization of a localized soliton with fractional particle number

Experimental method for detecting the soliton mode and fractionalization

Connection to the generalized Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model

Abstract

We propose an experimental scheme to simulate the fractionalization of particle number by using a one-dimensional spin-orbit coupled ultracold fermionic gas. The wanted spin-orbit coupling, a kink-like potential, and a conjugation-symmetry-breaking mass term are properly constructed by laser-atom interactions, leading to an effective low-energy relativistic Dirac Hamiltonian with a topologically nontrivial background field. The designed system supports a localized soliton excitation with a fractional particle number that is generally irrational and experimentally tunable, providing a direct realization of the celebrated generalized-Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model. In addition, we elaborate on how to detect the induced soliton mode with the FPN in the system.