Momentum-space Aharonov-Bohm interferometry in Rashba spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates

Since the recent experimental realization of synthetic Rashba spin-orbit coupling paved a new avenue for exploring and engineering topological phases in ultracold atoms, a precise, solid detection of Berry phase has been desired for unequivocal characterization of system topology. Here, we propose a scheme to conduct momentum-space Aharonov-Bohm interferometry in a Rashba spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate with a sudden change of in-plane Zeeman field, capable of measuring the Berry phase of Rashba energy bands. We find that the Berry phase with the presence of a Dirac point is directly revealed by a robust dark interference fringe, and that as a function of external Zeeman field is characterized by the contrast of fringes. We also build a variational model describing the interference process with semiclassical equations of motion of essential dynamical quantities, which lead to agreeable trajectories and geometric phases with the real-time simulation of Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Our study would provide timely guidance for the experimental detection of Berry phase in ultracold atomic systems and help further investigation on their interference dynamics in momentum space.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Ground-state phase diagram of an anisotropic spin-1/21/2 model on the triangular lattice

Motivated by the recent experiment on a rare-earth material YbMgGaO$_4$ [Y. Li \textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{115}, 167203 (2015)], which found that the ground state of YbMgGaO$_4$ is a quantum spin liquid, we study the ground-state phase diagram of an anisotropic spin-$1/2$ model that was proposed to describe YbMgGaO$_4$. Using the density-matrix renormalization group method in combination with the exact diagonalization, we calculate a variety of physical quantities, including the ground-state energy, the fidelity, the entanglement entropy and spin-spin correlation functions. Our studies show that in the quantum phase diagram there is a $120^{\circ}$ phase and two distinct stripe phases. The transitions from the two stripe phases to the $120^{\circ}$ phase are of the first order. However, the transition between the two stripe phases is not the first order, which is different from its classical counterpart. Additionally, we find no evidence for a quantum spin liquid in this model. Our results suggest that additional terms may be also important to model the material YbMgGaO$_4$. These findings will stimulate further experimental and theoretical works in understanding the quantum spin liquid ground state in YbMgGaO$_4$.Comment: minor change

Non-Hermitian Disorder-induced Topological insulators

Recent studies of disorder or non-Hermiticity induced topological insulators inject new ingredients for engineering topological matter. Here we consider the effect of purely non-Hermitian disorders, a combination of these two ingredients, in a 1D chiral symmetric lattice with disordered gain and loss. The increasing disorder strength can drive a transition from trivial to topological insulators, characterizing by the change of topological winding number defined by localized states in the gapless and complex bulk spectra. The non-Hermitian critical behaviors are characterized by the biorthogonal localization length of zero energy edge modes, which diverges at the critical transition point and establishes the bulk-edge correspondence. Furthermore, we show that the bulk topology may be experimentally accessed by measuring the biorthogonal chiral displacement $\mathcal{C}$, which converges to the winding number through time-averaging and can be extracted from proper Ramsey-interference sequences. We propose a scheme to implement and probe such non-Hermitian disorder driven topological insulators using photons in coupled micro-cavities.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures and Supplementary Material