Trapped Fermi Gases in Rotating Optical Lattices: Realization and Detection of the Topological Hofstadter Insulator

Journal Article · Fri Feb 22 00:00:00 EST 2008 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.100.070402· OSTI ID:21024779

Umucalilar, R O; Oktel, M Oe ^[1]; Hui, Zhai ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics, Bilkent University, 06800 Ankara (Turkey)
2. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720 (United States)

We consider a gas of noninteracting spinless fermions in a rotating optical lattice and calculate the density profile of the gas in an external confinement potential. The density profile exhibits distinct plateaus, which correspond to gaps in the single particle spectrum known as the Hofstadter butterfly. The plateaus result from insulating behavior whenever the Fermi energy lies within a gap. We discuss the necessary conditions to realize the Hofstadter insulator in a cold atom setup and show how the quantized Hall conductance can be measured from density profiles using the Streda formula.

• OSTI ID: 21024779
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 100, Issue 7; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.070402; (c) 2008 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
CONFINEMENT
FERMI GAS
FERMIONS
TOPOLOGY
TRAPPING