Cold atoms in twisted-bilayer optical potentials

Abstract

The possibility of creating crystal bilayers twisted with respect to each other has led to the discovery of a wide range of novel electron correlated phenomena whose full understanding is still under debate. Here we propose and analyze a method to simulate twisted bilayers using cold atoms in state-dependent optical lattices. Our proposed setup can be used as an alternative platform to explore twisted bilayers which allows one to control the inter/intra-layer coupling in a more flexible way than in the solid-state realizations. We focus on square geometries but also point how it can be extended to simulate other lattices which show Dirac-like physics. This setup opens a path to observe similar physics, e.g., band narrowing, with larger twist angles, to rule out some of the mechanisms to explain the observed strongly correlated effects, as well as to study other phenomena difficult to realize with crystals. As an example of the latter we explore the quantum optical consequences of letting emitters interact with twisted bilayer reservoirs, and predict the appearance of unconventional radiation patterns and emitter interactions following the emergent Moir\'e geometry.