Realization and Detection of Nonergodic Critical Phases in an Optical Raman Lattice

Yucheng Wang, Long Zhang, Sen Niu, Dapeng Yu, and Xiong-Jun Liu
Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 073204 – Published 12 August 2020
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Abstract

The critical phases, being delocalized but nonergodic, are fundamental phases different from both the many-body localization and ergodic extended quantum phases, and have so far not been realized in experiment. Here we propose an incommensurate topological insulating model of AIII symmetry class to realize such critical phases through an optical Raman lattice scheme, which possesses a one-dimensional (1D) spin-orbit coupling and an incommensurate Zeeman potential. We show the existence of both noninteracting and many-body critical phases, which can coexist with the topological phase, and show that the critical-localization transition coincides with the topological phase boundary in noninteracting regime. The dynamical detection of the critical phases is proposed and studied in detail based on the available experimental techniques. Finally, we demonstrate how the proposed critical phases can be achieved within the current ultracold atom experiments. This work paves the way to observe the novel critical phases.

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  • Received 14 February 2020
  • Accepted 21 July 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.073204

© 2020 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Atomic, Molecular & OpticalCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Yucheng Wang1,2,3,†, Long Zhang2,3,†, Sen Niu2,3, Dapeng Yu1, and Xiong-Jun Liu2,3,4,1,*

  • 1Shenzhen Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, and Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China
  • 2International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • 3Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100871, China
  • 4CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

  • *Corresponding author. xiongjunliu@pku.edu.cn
  • These authors contribute equally to this work.

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Issue

Vol. 125, Iss. 7 — 14 August 2020

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