Abstract
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices form a clean quantum simulator platform which can be utilized to examine topological phenomena and test exotic topological materials. Here we propose an experimental scheme to measure the Chern numbers of two-dimensional multiband topological insulators with bosonic atoms. We show how to extract the topological invariants out of a sequence of time-of-flight images by applying a phase-retrieval algorithm to matter waves. We illustrate advantages of using bosonic atoms as well as efficiency and robustness of the method with two prominent examples: the Harper-Hofstadter model with an arbitrary commensurate magnetic flux and the Haldane model on a brick-wall lattice.
1 More- Received 17 December 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.99.043611
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