PRL 116, 143003 (2016)
Jinlong Yu, 1,3 Zhi-Fang Xu, 2,3,* Rong Lü, 1,4 and Li You 1,4
1 State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
2 MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurements, School of Physics,Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
3 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA
4 Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100084, China
(Received 17 June 2015; published 7 April 2016)
We propose a scheme to dynamically synthesize a space-periodic effective magnetic field for neutral atoms by time-periodic magnetic field pulses. When atomic spin adiabatically follows the direction of the effective magnetic field, an adiabatic scalar potential together with a geometric vector potential emerges for the atomic center-of-mass motion, due to the Berry phase effect. While atoms hop between honeycomb lattice sites formed by the minima of the adiabatic potential, complex Peierls phase factors in the hopping coefficients are induced by the vector potential, and these phase factors facilitate a topological Chern insulator. With further tuning of external parameters, botha topological phase transition andtopological flat bands can be achieved, highlighting realistic prospects for studying strongly correlated phenomena in this system. Our Letter presents an alternative pathway towards creating and manipulating topological states of ultracold atoms by magnetic fields.
