Dissipative preparation of topological states of matter

by Jan Carl Budich (Innsbruck University)

Wednesday 4 Feb 2015, 10:30 → 11:05 Europe/Stockholm

132:028 Nordita East

The discovery of topological insulators and superconductors has given a new twist to our understanding of the physics of Bloch bands. Complementary to the conventional study of Hamiltonians in closed quantum systems and their ground states, we here discuss how topological states of matter can be prepared in a non-equilibrium fashion in open quantum systems.

By means of an engineered system bath interaction, such exotic quantum many body states can be approached dissipatively as steady states of a quantum master equation.

We explain why this approach is particularly challenging in two spatial dimensions due to a fundamental competition between topology and locality.

Finally, a new mechanism is introduced that enables the robust dissipative preparation of states with a non-vanishing Chern number.