Wilson Fermions and Axion Electrodynamics in Optical Lattices

Details Wilson Fermions and Axion Electrodynamics in Optical Lattices Wilson Fermions and Axion Electrodynamics in Optical Lattices

2010-04-28

arxiv.org/abs/1004.5101v2

Phys.Rev.Lett.105:190404,2010

Physics

Condensed Matter

Quantum Gases

RevTex4 file, color figures, slightly longer than the published version

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.190404

The formulation of massless relativistic fermions in lattice gauge theories is hampered by the fundamental problem of species doubling, namely, the rise of spurious fermions modifying the underlying physics. A suitable tailoring of the fermion masses prevents such abundance of species, and leads to the so-called Wilson fermions. Here we show that ultracold atoms provide us with the first controllable realization of these paradigmatic fermions, thus generating a quantum simulator of fermionic lattice gauge theories. We describe a novel scheme that exploits laser-assisted tunneling in a cubic optical superlattice to design the Wilson fermion masses. The high versatility of this proposal allows us to explore a variety of interesting phases in three-dimensional topological insulators, and to test the remarkable predictions of axion electrodynamics.

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