Observation of chiral edge states with neutral fermions in synthetic Hall ribbons

By M. Mancini, G. Pagano, G. Cappellini, Lorenzo Francesco Livi, M. Rider, J. Catani, C. Sias, Peter Zoller, M. Inguscio, M. Dalmonte and 1 more. Science, 2015

692 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Visualizing edge states in atomic systems Visualizing edge states in atomic systems Simulating the solid state using ultracold atoms is an appealing research approach. In solids, however, the charged electrons are susceptible to an external magnetic field, which curves their trajectories and makes them skip along the edge of the sample. To observe this phenomenon with cold atoms requires an artificial magnetic field to have a similar effect on the neutral atoms (see the Perspective by Celi and Tarruell). Stuhl et al. obtained skipping orbits with bosonic atoms using a lattice that consisted of an array of atoms in one direction and three internal atomic spin states in the other. In a complementary experiment, Mancini et al. observed similar physics with fermionic atoms. Science, this issue pp. 1514 and 1510; see also p. 1450 Analogs of quantum-Hall-effect edge states are observed with fermionic ytterbium-173 atoms in a synthetic lattice. [Also see Perspective by Celi and Tarruell] Chiral edge states are a hallmark of quantum Hall physics. In electronic systems, they appear as a macroscopic consequence of the cyclotron orbits induced by a magnetic field, which are naturally truncated at the physical boundary of the sample. Here we report on the experimental realization of chiral edge states in a ribbon geometry with an ultracold gas of neutral fermions subjected to an artificial gauge field. By imaging individual sites along a synthetic dimension, encoded in the nuclear spin of the atoms, we detect the existence of the edge states and observe the edge-cyclotron orbits induced during quench dynamics. The realization of fermionic chiral edge states opens the door for edge state interferometry and the study of non-Abelian anyons in atomic systems.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ed58f07184a559254c0fe1823d49f29480f0508e

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Citations in the corpus

Synthetic dimensions in integrated photonics: From optical isolation to four-dimensional quantum Hall physics (2015, background): “Very recently, exciting new perspectives have arisen from the combination of such engineered gauge fields with a synthetic dimension, where internal atomic degrees of freedom are exploited as an additional lattice dimension, as has been theoretically proposed [22,23] and quickly experimentally reali”
Topological bands for ultracold atoms (2018, positive): “We show in Figure 17 the results of an experiment performed by Mancini et al. (2015).”
Topological Thouless pumping of ultracold fermions (2015, methodology): “[16] Mancini, M.”
Symmetry and Topology in Non-Hermitian Physics (2018, background): “[198] M.”
Thouless pumping and topology (2022, methodology): “, in the form of internal levels in an atom [102, 103] as illustrated in Fig.”
Artificial gauge fields in materials and engineered systems (2017, neutral): “[221], and was eventually realized almost simultaneously by two experimental groups with bosonic [222] and fermionic [223] atoms, followed by realizations based on optical clock transitions [224–226].”
Alkaline-Earth Atoms in Optical Tweezers (2018, background): “orbit coupling in synthetic dimensions [38,39] or work towards Kondo-like systems [34,70,71].”
Quantum simulation of the Hubbard model with ultracold fermions in optical lattices (2018, neutral): “Finally, other promising directions for future research include the study of out-of-equilibrium dynamics in this system [174,111,175,176], and the interplay of strong correlations with disorder [81,177,178] and topology [179,180,181,182].”
Lattice gauge theory simulations in the quantum information era (2016, background): “[116], many paradigmatic system Hamiltonians have been realized in these systems, including SU(2) [117, 118] and SU(N) fermionic Hubbard models [119–121], long-range interactions [122–124], and static gauge fields [125–129], just to name a few.”
Optomechanical creation of magnetic fields for photons on a lattice (2015, background): “When discussing the effects of gauge fields in such a setting, the system is best understood within the concept of ‘synthetic’ dimensions [41–44].”