Abstract
Although Weyl semimetals have been extensively studied for exploring rich topological physics, the direct observation of the celebrated chiral magnetic effect (CME) associated with the so-called dipolar chiral anomaly has long intrigued and challenged physicists, still remaining elusive in nature. Here we propose a feasible scheme for experimental implementation of ultracold atoms that may enable us to probe the CME with a pure topological current in an artificial Weyl semimetal. The paired Weyl points with the dipolar chiral anomaly emerge in the presence of the well-designed spin-orbital coupling and laser-assisted tunneling. Both of the two artificial fields are readily realizable and highly tunable via current optical techniques using ultracold atoms trapped in three-dimensional optical lattices, providing a reliable way for manipulating Weyl points in the momentum-energy space. By applying a weak artificial magnetic field, the system processes an auxiliary current originated from the topology of a paired Weyl points, namely, the pure CME current. This topological current can be extracted from measuring the center-of-mass motion of ultracold atoms, which may pave the way to directly and unambiguously observe the CME in experiments.
Highlights
Quantum simulation is one of the major topics in ultracoldatom research
We present a feasible proposal for simulating the chiral magnetic effect (CME) with ultracold atoms in a 3D optical lattices (OLs)
In order to observe CME with the controllable COM velocity, we provide the following two schemes: (i) The magnetic flux is determined by the momentum transfer δk in the Raman process
Summary
Quantum simulation is one of the major topics in ultracoldatom research. Compared to condensed matter, ultracoldatomic gases trapped in optical lattices (OLs) host advantages such as precise control of the system parameters and the disorder [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The SOC has been realized in experiments using ultracold atoms [11,12], which is our starting point, while the band inversion can be naturally introduced in the atomic operator representation It results in separated WPs with opposite chirality along the z axis of the BZ. (ii) The laser-assisted-tunneling technique [18] serves as a perfect tool for engineering the energy shift between the paired WPs and the effective magnetic field. It paves the way for engineering WPs associated with the CME. It facilitates the observation of the topological current [cf. Eq (3)], providing direct evidence of the CME
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