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Competition and interplay between topology and quasi-periodic disorder in Thouless pumping of ultracold atoms

Nature Physics volume 17, pages 844–849 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Robustness against perturbations lies at the heart of topological phenomena. If, however, a perturbation such as disorder becomes dominant, it may cause a topological phase transition between topologically non-trivial and trivial phases. Here we experimentally reveal the competition and interplay between topology and quasi-periodic disorder in a Thouless pump realized with ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, by creating a quasi-periodic potential from weak to strong regimes in a controllable manner. We demonstrate a disorder-induced pumping in which the presence of quasi-periodic disorder can induce a non-trivial pump for a specific pumping sequence, whereas no pump is observed in the clean limit. Our highly controllable system, which can also straightforwardly incorporate interatomic interaction, could be a unique platform for studying various disorder-related effects in a wide range of topological quantum phenomena.

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Fig. 1: Rice–Mele model.
Fig. 2: Breakdown of Thouless pump under quasi-periodic disorder.
Fig. 3: Gap closing and opening induced by quasi-periodic disorder.
Fig. 4: Disorder-induced pumping.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The codes used for the numerical simulations within this paper are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank H. Aoki, Y. Hatsugai and K. Imura for valuable discussions and A. Sawada for experimental assistance. This work was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) (grant nos. JP25220711, JP26247064, JP16H00990, JP16H01053, JP17H06138, JP18H05405, JP18H05228 and JP18K13480), the Impulsing Paradigm Change through Disruptive Technologies (ImPACT) programme, the CREST programme of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (grant no. JPMJCR1673) and the Quantum Leap Flagship Program of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT Q-LEAP) (grant no. JPMXS0118069021). Y.K. acknowledges the support of a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (grant no. 17J00486). P.M. is supported by the JST (CREST grant. no. JPMJCR19T2), by the MEXT-supported Program for the Strategic Research Foundation at Private Universities Topological Science (grant no. S1511006) and by a JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists (grant no. 20K14375).

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Shuta Nakajima, Nobuyuki Takei.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Shuta Nakajima, Nobuyuki Takei, Keita Sakuma, Yoshihito Kuno & Yoshiro Takahashi

  2. The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Shuta Nakajima

  3. Department of Physics, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Yoshihito Kuno

  4. Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Pasquale Marra

  5. Department of Physics, and Research and Education Center for Natural Sciences, Keio University, Hiyoshi, Japan

    Pasquale Marra

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Contributions

S.N., N.T. and K.S. carried out experiments and the data analysis. Y.K. and P.M. carried out the theoretical calculation. Y.T. conducted the whole experiment. All the authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shuta Nakajima.

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Nakajima, S., Takei, N., Sakuma, K. et al. Competition and interplay between topology and quasi-periodic disorder in Thouless pumping of ultracold atoms. Nat. Phys. 17, 844–849 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01229-9

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