Hannah M. Price

Synthetic dimensions in integrated photonics: From optical isolation to four-dimensional quantum Hall physics

Recent technological advances in integrated photonics have spurred on the study of topological phenomena in engineered bosonic systems. Indeed, the controllability of silicon ring-resonator arrays has opened up new perspectives for building lattices for photons with topologically nontrivial bands and integrating them into photonic devices for practical applications. Here, we push these developments even further by exploiting the different modes of a silicon ring resonator as an extra dimension for photons. Tunneling along this synthetic dimension is implemented via an external time-dependent modulation that allows for the generation of engineered gauge fields. We show how this approach can be used to generate a variety of exciting topological phenomena in integrated photonics, ranging from a topologically-robust optical isolator in a spatially one-dimensional (1D) ring-resonator chain to a driven-dissipative analog of the 4D quantum Hall effect in a spatially 3D resonator lattice. Our proposal paves the way towards the use of topological effects in the design of novel photonic lattices supporting many frequency channels and displaying higher connectivities.

Exploring 4D quantum Hall physics with a 2D topological charge pump

The discovery of topological states of matter has greatly improved our understanding of phase transitions in physical systems. Instead of being described by local order parameters, topological phases are described by global topological invariants and are therefore robust against perturbations. A prominent example is the two-dimensional (2D) integer quantum Hall effect: it is characterized by the first Chern number, which manifests in the quantized Hall response that is induced by an external electric field. Generalizing the quantum Hall effect to four-dimensional (4D) systems leads to the appearance of an additional quantized Hall response, but one that is nonlinear and described by a 4D topological invariant—the second Chern number. Here we report the observation of a bulk response with intrinsic 4D topology and demonstrate its quantization by measuring the associated second Chern number. By implementing a 2D topological charge pump using ultracold bosonic atoms in an angled optical superlattice, we realize a dynamical version of the 4D integer quantum Hall effect. Using a small cloud of atoms as a local probe, we fully characterize the nonlinear response of the system via in situ imaging and site-resolved band mapping. Our findings pave the way to experimentally probing higher-dimensional quantum Hall systems, in which additional strongly correlated topological phases, exotic collective excitations and boundary phenomena such as isolated Weyl fermions are predicted.

Four-Dimensional Quantum Hall Effect with Ultracold Atoms.

We propose a realistic scheme to detect the 4D quantum Hall effect using ultracold atoms. Based on contemporary technology, motion along a synthetic fourth dimension can be accomplished through controlled transitions between internal states of atoms arranged in a 3D optical lattice. From a semiclassical analysis, we identify the linear and nonlinear quantized current responses of our 4D model, relating these to the topology of the Bloch bands. We then propose experimental protocols, based on current or center-of-mass-drift measurements, to extract the topological second Chern number. Our proposal sets the stage for the exploration of novel topological phases in higher dimensions.

Measurement of Chern numbers through center-of-mass responses

Probing the center-of-mass of an ultracold atomic cloud can be used to measure Chern numbers, the topological invariants underlying the quantum Hall effects. In this work, we show how such center-of-mass observables can have a much richer dependence on topological invariants than previously discussed. In fact, the response of the center of mass depends not only on the current density, typically measured in a solid-state system, but also on the particle density, which itself can be sensitive to the topology of the band structure. We apply a semiclassical approach, supported by numerical simulations, to highlight the key differences between center-of-mass responses and more standard conductivity measurements. We illustrate this by analyzing both the two- and four-dimensional quantum Hall effects. These results have important implications for experiments in engineered topological systems, such as ultracold gases and photonics.

Floquet topological system based on frequency-modulated classical coupled harmonic oscillators

We theoretically propose how to observe topological effects in a generic classical system of coupled harmonic oscillators, such as classical pendula or lumped-element electric circuits, whose oscillation frequency is modulated fast in time. Making use of Floquet theory in the high-frequency limit, we identify a regime in which the system is accurately described by a Harper-Hofstadter model where the synthetic magnetic field can be externally tuned via the phase of the frequency modulation of the different oscillators. We illustrate how the topologically protected chiral edge states, as well as the Hofstadter butterfly of bulk bands, can be observed in the driven-dissipative steady state under a monochromatic drive. In analogy with the integer quantum Hall effect, we show how the topological Chern numbers of the bands can be extracted from the mean transverse shift of the steady-state oscillation amplitude distribution. Finally, we discuss the regime where the analogy with the Harper-Hofstadter model breaks down.

Experimental measurement of the Berry curvature from anomalous transport

The Berry curvature is essential to the study of the topological properties of a system, be it solid-state, atomic or photonic. In 1D photonic lattices there is a new clever way of measuring the Berry curvature.

Synthetic dimensions for cold atoms from shaking a harmonic trap

We introduce a simple scheme to implement synthetic dimensions in ultracold atomic gases, which only requires two basic and ubiquitous ingredients: the harmonic trap, which confines the atoms, combined with a periodic shaking. In our approach, standard harmonic oscillator eigenstates are reinterpreted as lattice sites along a synthetic dimension, while the coupling between these lattice sites is controlled by the applied time-modulation. The phase of this modulation enters as a complex hopping phase, leading straightforwardly to an artificial magnetic field upon adding a second dimension. We show that this artificial gauge field has important consequences, such as the counterintuitive reduction of average energy under resonant driving, or the realisation of quantum Hall physics. Our approach offers significant advantages over previous implementations of synthetic dimensions, providing an intriguing route towards higher-dimensional topological physics and strongly-correlated states.

Effects of Berry curvature on the collective modes of ultracold gases.

Topological energy bands have important geometrical properties described by the Berry curvature. We show that the Berry curvature changes the hydrodynamic equations of motion for a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate, and causes significant modifications to the collective mode frequencies. We illustrate our results for the case of two-dimensional Rashba spin-orbit coupling in a Zeeman field. Using an operator approach, we derive the effects of Berry curvature on the dipole mode in very general settings. We show that the sizes of these effects can be large and readily detected in experiment. Collective modes therefore provide a sensitive way to measure geometrical properties of energy bands.

Quantum mechanics with a momentum-space artificial magnetic field.

The Berry curvature is a geometrical property of an energy band which acts as a momentum space magnetic field in the effective Hamiltonian describing single-particle quantum dynamics. We show how this perspective may be exploited to study systems directly relevant to ultracold gases and photonics. Given the exchanged roles of momentum and position, we demonstrate that the global topology of momentum space is crucially important. We propose an experiment to study the Harper-Hofstadter Hamiltonian with a harmonic trap that will illustrate the advantages of this approach and that will also constitute the first realization of magnetism on a torus.

Spin-orbit coupling in a hexagonal ring of pendula

We consider the mechanical motion of a system of six macroscopic pendula which are connected with springs and arranged in a hexagonal geometry. When the springs are pre-tensioned, the coupling between neighbouring pendula along the longitudinal (L) and the transverse (T) directions are different: identifying the motion along the L and T directions as a spin-like degree of freedom, we theoretically and experimentally verify that the pre-tensioned springs result in a tunable spin-orbit coupling. We elucidate the structure of such a spin-orbit coupling in the extended two-dimensional honeycomb lattice, making connections to physics of graphene. The experimental frequencies and the oscillation patterns of the eigenmodes for the hexagonal ring of pendula are extracted from a spectral analysis of the motion of the pendula in response to an external excitation and are found to be in good agreement with our theoretical predictions. We anticipate that extending this classical analogue of quantum mechanical spin-orbit coupling to two-dimensional lattices will lead to exciting new topological phenomena in classical mechanics.