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Ultracold atoms

A topological charge pump

Nature Physics volume 12, pages 288–289 (2016)Cite this article

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Two experiments with ultracold fermionic and bosonic atoms in optical superlattices demonstrate the quantized charge transport predicted by Thouless in the 1980s.

The quantum pump, originally proposed by David Thouless1, is one of the most intriguing effects in quantum mechanics. It entails the transport of charge, in the absence of a net external electric or magnetic field, through an adiabatic cyclic evolution of the underlying Hamiltonian. In contrast with the classical case, the transported charge is quantized and purely determined by the topology of the pump cycle, which makes it robust against perturbations, such as interaction effects or disorder2.

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Figure 1: Illustration of the superlattice and pumping scheme.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Roberta Citro is at Dipartimento di Fisica “E. R. Caianiello”, Università di Salerno and Spin-CNR, I-84084 Fisciano, Italy,

    Roberta Citro

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  1. Roberta Citro
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Correspondence to Roberta Citro.

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Citro, R. A topological charge pump. Nature Phys 12, 288–289 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3649

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