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Published on: March 30, 2017
Observation of Kibble-Zurek Behavior across Topological Transitions of a Chern Band in Ultracold Atoms
Huan Yuan1, Chang-Rui Yi1, Jia-Yu Guo1
1University of Science and Technology of China, University of Science and Technology of China, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, and School of Physical Sciences, Hefei 230026, China; Shanghai Research Center for Quantum Science and CAS Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, Shanghai 201315, China; and Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei 230088, China.
Abstract:
The Kibble-Zurek (KZ) mechanism renders a theoretical framework for elucidating the formation of topological defects across continuous phase transitions. Nevertheless, it is not immediately clear whether the KZ mechanism applies to topological phase transitions. The direct experimental study for such a topic is hindered by quenching a certain parameter over orders of magnitude in topological materials. Instead, we investigate the KZ behavior across topological transitions of a Chern band in two-dimensional (2D) optical Raman lattices with quantum gases. Defined as the defects, excitation density is reconstructed via measuring the spin wave functions, with which the power-law scaling of total excitation density is extracted and such scaling could be interpreted within the KZ framework. Our work has heralded the commencement of experimentally exploring the KZ mechanism of the topological phase transitions.
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