CMT Seminar: Chern Numbers in Time-of-Flight Images

Monday, May 9, 2011 – 3:15pm
Reiss 261A
Noah Bray-Ali
Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland, College Park

We introduce a technique for detecting the Chern number in the time-of-flight image of an integer quantum Hall fluid of ultra-cold atoms. In the integer quantum Hall regime, the momentum distribution develops peaks and dips, with the number of peaks equal to the Chern
number. During ballistic expansion, this leads to ripples in the spatial profile with feature size that can be resolved with available time-of-flight imaging.

Host: Jim Freericks