Abstract
Constructing new topological materials is of vital interest for the development of robust quantum applications. However, engineering such materials often causes technological overhead, such as large magnetic fields, spin-orbit coupling, or dynamical superlattice potentials. Simplifying the experimental requirements has been addressed on a conceptual level – by proposing to combine simple lattice structures with Floquet engineering – but there has been no experimental implementation. Here, we demonstrate topological pumping in a Floquet-Bloch band using a plain sinusoidal lattice potential and two-tone driving with frequencies ω and 2ω. We adiabatically prepare a near-insulating Floquet band of ultracold fermions via a frequency chirp, which avoids gap closings en route from trivial to topological bands. Subsequently, we induce topological pumping by slowly cycling the amplitude and the phase of the 2ω drive. Our system is well described by an effective Shockley model, establishing a novel paradigm to engineer topological matter from simple underlying lattice geometries. This approach could enable the application of quantized pumping in metrology, following recent experimental advances on two-frequency driving in real materials. Show more
Publication status
publishedJournal / series
Physical Review LettersVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
American Physical SocietySubject
Cold gases in optical lattices; Synthetic gauge fieldsOrganisational unit
03599 - Esslinger, Tilman / Esslinger, Tilman
Funding
182650 - Interplay between Topology, Interactions and Dissipation in Driven Quantum Many-Body Systems (SNF)
742579 - Mass, heat and spin transport in interlinked quantum gases (EC)
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