Dynamical Buildup of a Quantized Hall Response from Nontopological States

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftForschungsartikelBeigetragenBegutachtung

Beitragende

  • Ying Hu - , Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Autor:in)
  • Peter Zoller - , Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Universität Innsbruck (Autor:in)
  • Jan Carl Budich - , Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Universität Innsbruck (Autor:in)

Abstract

We consider a two-dimensional system initialized in a topologically trivial state before its Hamiltonian is ramped through a phase transition into a Chern insulator regime. This scenario is motivated by current experiments with ultracold atomic gases aimed at realizing time-dependent dynamics in topological insulators. Our main findings are twofold. First, considering coherent dynamics, the nonequilibrium Hall response is found to approach a topologically quantized time-averaged value in the limit of slow but nonadiabatic parameter ramps, even though the Chern number of the state remains trivial. Second, adding dephasing, the destruction of quantum coherence is found to stabilize this Hall response, while the Chern number generically becomes undefined. We provide a geometric picture of this phenomenology in terms of the time-dependent Berry curvature.

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Aufsatznummer126803
FachzeitschriftPhysical review letters
Jahrgang117
Ausgabenummer12
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 16 Sept. 2016
Peer-Review-StatusJa
Extern publiziertJa

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