Emulating Twistronics and Beyond with UltraCold Atoms
Abstract
Recent groundbreaking advances in twisted van der Waals heterostructures (i.e. twistronics) have uncovered a new frontier in physics, and we propose to bring these developments to ultra-cold atomic gases. The motivation lies with the recent remarkable discovery of correlated insulating phases and superconductivity in bilayer graphene that is twisted to the “magic-angle”; we will demonstrate how cold-atomic gas experiments can harness this phenomenon to discover novel quantum phases, strongly correlated phenomena, and quantum phase transitions that go beyond the conventional paradigm of symmetry breaking. The incommensurate effects of the twist can be emulated through a quasiperiodic potential and we will utilize artificial gauge fields to engineer twodimensional band structures that give rise to Dirac points, quadratic band touchings, and topological Chern insulators. The phase diagram of these models will be analytically accessed using perturbation theory as well as numerically probed using diagonalization techniques. We will compute the velocity, effective mass, and band gap to discover if the quasiperiodic potential can drive a quantum phase transition that makes the dispersion flat and induces metallic behavior. This quantum phase transition can occur without breaking any symmetry, which would be significant as it represents phenomena beyond the conventional paradigm of phase transitions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 12, 2021
- Source ID
- FA95502010136
Entities
People
- Jedediah H Pixley
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Rutgers University
- United States Air Force