Exploring Interacting Topological Insulators with Ultracold Atoms: the Synthetic Creutz-Hubbard Model

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive theoretical and numerical analysis of the synthetic Creutz-Hubbard ladder model, exploring the interplay of topological phases and strong interactions, and proposes an experimental realization using ultracold atoms.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of the synthetic Creutz-Hubbard model, highlighting its potential for simulating interacting topological insulators with cold atoms.

Findings

Confirmed the presence of correlated topological phases under strong interactions.

Extended numerical simulations to explore orbital quantum magnetism.

Proposed an experimental setup using ultracold fermionic atoms in optical lattices.

Abstract

Understanding the robustness of topological phases of matter in the presence of strong interactions, and synthesising novel strongly-correlated topological materials, lie among the most important and difficult challenges of modern theoretical and experimental physics. In this work, we present a complete theoretical analysis of the synthetic Creutz-Hubbard ladder, which is a paradigmatic model that provides a neat playground to address these challenges. We put special attention to the competition of correlated topological phases and orbital quantum magnetism in the regime of strong interactions. These results are furthermore confirmed and extended by extensive numerical simulations. Moreover we propose how to experimentally realize this model in a synthetic ladder, made of two internal states of ultracold fermionic atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice. Our work paves the way towards quantum simulators of interacting topological insulators with cold atoms.