2017/06/01 by Zixian Zhou, Zhou, Zixian, Zhiguo Lü +4
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum chaos and dynamical systems #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1706.00184
arxiv created 2017/06/01 · openalex publication_date 2017/06/01 · arxiv updated 2017/06/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We construct an artificial U(1) gauge field in the cold atom system to form a monopole along with vortices. It is supposed that the cold atoms are confined on a spherical surface, and two sets of identical laser beams in the opposite propagating directions shine on two sides of the sphere. Arbitrary Chern number CN, proportional to the quantized magnetic flux, can be obtained by selecting proper laser modes. This construction meets the condition of Chern's theorem, so that the vortices of the atom wave function will emerge on the sphere, whose winding number equals CN. It is found that a geometric symmetry is broken spontaneously for odd CN, which corresponds to a topology-induced quantum phase transition. In particular for CN=1, the ground state of the cold atoms are double-degenerate and can be applied to make a stable qubit. Since the ground-state degeneracy is protected by topology-induced symmetry breaking against dissipation, the proposed topological structure has vast potential in quantum storage.