Non-Abelian Thouless pumping in a Rice–Mele ladder

We propose and study various realizations of a Hofstadter-Hubbard model on a cylinder geometry with fermionic cold atoms in optical lattices. The cylindrical optical lattice is created by copropagating Laguerre-Gauss beams, i.e.~light beams carrying orbital angular momentum. By strong focusing of the light beams we create a real space optical lattice in the form of rings, which are offset in energy. A second set of Laguerre-Gauss beams then induces a Raman-hopping between these rings, imprinting phases corresponding to a synthetic magnetic field (artificial gauge field). In addition, by rotating the lattice potential, we achieve a slowly varying flux through the hole of the cylinder, which allows us to probe the Hall response of the system as a realization of Laughlin's thought experiment. We study how in the presence of interactions fractional quantum Hall physics could be observed in this setup.

We propose an experimental scheme to simulate and observe relativistic Dirac fermions with cold atoms in a hexagonal optical lattice. By controlling the lattice anisotropy, one can realize both massive and massless Dirac fermions and observe the phase transition between them. Through explicit calculations, we show that both the Bragg spectroscopy and the atomic density profile in a trap can be used to demonstrate the Dirac fermions and the associated phase transition.

Cold atoms in optical lattices

We investigate a new type of quantum ratchet which may be realized by cold atoms in a double-well optical lattice, pulsed with unequal periods. The classical dynamics is chaotic and we find the classical diffusion rate D is asymmetric in momentum up to a finite time t(r). The quantum behavior produces a corresponding asymmetry in the momentum distribution which is "frozen-in" by dynamical localization provided the break time t(*)>or=t(r). We conclude that the cold atom ratchets require Db/ variant Planck's over 2pi approximately 1, where b is a small deviation from period-one pulses.

The spontaneous emergence of enhanced responses and local orders are properties often associated with complex matter where nonlinearities and spatial inhomogeneities dominate. We discuss these phenomena in quantum devices realized with superconducting Josephson junction networks and cold atoms in optical lattices. We evidence how the pertinent engineering of the network's shape induces the enhancement of the zero-voltage Josephson critical currents in superconducting arrays as well as the emergence of spatially localized condensates for cold atoms in inhomogeneous optical lattices.

This work is devoted to Bloch oscillations (BO) of cold neutral atoms in optical lattices. After a general introduction to the phenomenon of BO and its realization in optical lattices, we study different extentions of this problem, which account for recent developments in this field. These are two-dimensional BO, decoherence of BO, and BO in correlated systems. Although these problems are discussed in relation to the system of cold atoms in optical lattices, many of the results are of general validity and can be well applied to other systems showing the phenomenon of BO.

Focus on Cold Atoms in Optical Lattices

There has recently been a revival of the Bloch theory of energy bands in solids. This revival was caused, on one hand, by the discovery of topological insulators and the discovery of graphene, and, on the other end, by a very efficient new technique that was developed for creating artificial solids. These are the cold atoms in optical lattices. Last year geometric phases were measured in energy bands of cold atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice by using Bloch oscillations. These phases are related to the Wyckoff positions, or the symmetry centers in the Bravais lattice. In this lecture a theoretical frame is developed for magnetic Bloch oscillations, meaning oscillations in the presence of a magnetic field. The theory is based on the kq-representation and the symmetric coordinates in solids. It is shown that for a Bloch electron in a magnetic field the orbit quasi-center is a conserved quantity. This is similar to the conservation of the quasi-momentum for an electron in a periodic potential. When an electric field is turned on, the orbit quasi-center oscillates in a similar way to the Bloch oscillations in the absence of a magnetic field. But there is a difference because the magnetic Brillouin zone is different. It depends on the strength of the magnetic field. An analogy is drawn between Bloch oscillations and magnetic Bloch oscillations. By using the magnetic translations it is indicated that a magnetic Wannier-Stark ladder appears in the spectrum of a Bloch electron in crossed magnetic and electric fields. The geometric phases for magnetic Bloch oscillations should be magnetic field dependent.

We investigated the transport properties of cold atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice under distance selective dissipation and external driving. We analyze how tunneling, on-site interaction, dissipation and external driving affect the transport of cold atoms. We used mean-field theory and the classical phase space method to explain the dynamics of the system. In order to analyze the transport effect of cold atoms, we calculate the relative density of atoms on each site and the standard deviation of relative density. The manipulation transport of cold atoms can be achieved through a step function like interaction in theory. In particular, we study the transport of cold atoms in the double-well with external driving. The steady states of the system are analytically derived.

Ultracold atoms in optical lattices provide an ideal platform for exploring many-body physics of a large system arising from the coupling among a series of small identical systems whose few-body dynamics is exactly solvable. Using Landau-Zener (LZ) transition of bosonic atoms in double-well optical lattices as an experimentally realizable model, we investigate such few- to many-body routes by exploring the relation and difference between the small few-body (in one double well) and the large many-body (in double-well lattice) nonequilibrium dynamics of cold atoms in optical lattices. We find the many-body coupling between double wells greatly enhances the LZ transition probability. The many-body dynamics in the double-well lattice shares both similarity and difference from the few-body dynamics in one and two double wells. The sign of the on-site interaction plays a significant role in the many-body LZ transition. Various experimental signatures of the many-body LZ transition, including atom density, momentum distribution, and density-density correlation, are obtained.

We review our recent theoretical advances in phase transition of cold atoms in optical lattices, such as triangular lattice, honeycomb lattice, and Kagome lattice. By employing the new developed numerical methods called dynamical cluster approximation and cellular dynamical mean-field theory, the properties in different phases of cold atoms in optical lattices are studied, such as density of states, Fermi surface and double occupancy. On triangular lattice, a reentrant behavior of phase translation line between Fermi liquid state and pseudogap state is found due to the Kondo effect. We find the system undergoes a second order Mott transition from a metallic state into a Mott insulator state on honeycomb lattice and triangular Kagome lattice. The stability of quantum spin Hall phase towards interaction on honeycomb lattice with spin-orbital coupling is systematically discussed. And we investigate the transition from quantum spin Hall insulator to normal insulator in Kagome lattice which includes a nearest-neighbor intrinsic spin-orbit coupling and a trimerized Hamiltonian. In addition, we propose the experimental protocols to observe these phase transition of cold atoms in optical lattices.

We explore the topological properties of double-Weyl semimetals with cold atoms in optical lattices. We first propose to realize a tight-binding model of simulating the double-Weyl semimetal with a pair of double-Weyl points by engineering the atomic hopping in a three-dimensional optical lattice. We show that the double-Weyl points with topological charges of \$pm2$ behave as sink and source of Berry flux in momentum space connecting by two Fermi arcs and they are stabilized by the \$C_{4h}$ point-group symmetry. By applying a realizable \$C_4$ breaking term, we find that each double-Weyl point splits into two single-Weyl points and obtain rich phase diagrams in the parameter space spanned by the strengths of an effective Zeeman term and the \$C_4$ breaking term, which contains a topological and a normal insulating phases and two topological Weyl semimetal phases with eight and four single-Weyl points, apart from the double-Weyl semimetal phase. Furthermore, we demonstrate with numerical simulations that (i) the mimicked double- and single-Weyl points can be detected by measuring the atomic transfer fractions after a Bloch oscillation; (ii) the Chern number of different quantum phases in the phase diagram can be extracted from the center shift of the hybrid Wannier functions, which can be directly measured with the time-of-flight imaging; (iii) the band topology of the \$C_4$ symmetric Bloch Hamiltonian can be detected simply from measuring the spin polarization at the high symmetry momentum points with a condensate in the optical lattice. The proposed system would provide a promising platform for elaborating the intrinsic exotic physics of double-Weyl semimetals and the related topological phase transitions.

A four-beam 3D near-resonant optical lattice system is implemented and cold atoms are loaded into the optical lattice based on cesium magneto-optical trap and optical molasses. The dependence of the final temperature due to the Sisyphus cooling on the intensity and the frequency detuning of optical lattice are experiemently investigated，and the lifetime of the cold atoms in optical lattice are measured via the short-distance time_of_flight absorption spectra.

Brownian motors are devices which rectify Brownian motion, i.e. they can generate a current of particles out of unbiased fluctuations. Brownian motors are important for the understanding of molecular motors, and are also promising for the realization of new nanolelectronic devices. Among the different systems that can be used to study Brownian motors, cold atoms in optical lattices are quite an unusual one: there is no thermal bath and both the potential and the fluctuations are determined by laser fields. In this Lecture notes recent experimental implementations of Brownian motors using cold atoms in optical lattices are reviewed.

We study the asymmetric Hubbard model at half filling as a generic model to describe the physics of two species of repulsively interacting fermionic cold atoms in optical lattices. We use dynamical mean-field theory to obtain the paramagnetic phase diagram of the model as a function of temperature, interaction strength, and hopping asymmetry. A Mott transition with a region of two coexistent solutions is found for all nonzero values of the hopping asymmetry. At low temperatures the metallic phase is a heavy Fermi liquid, qualitatively analogous to the Fermi-liquid state of the symmetric Hubbard model. Above a coherence temperature, an orbital-selective crossover takes place, wherein one fermionic species effectively localizes, and the resulting bad metallic state resembles the non-Fermi-liquid state of the Falicov-Kimball model. We compute observables relevant to cold atom systems such as the double occupation, the specific heat, and entropy, and characterize their behavior in the different phases.