K hexagonal lattice

Our experimental setup consists of a 39K BEC in an optical honeycomb lattice. The lattice is formed by three propagating, s-polarized, blue-detuned laser beams at a wavelength of  745nm, which interfere in the xy-plane at relative angles of 120°.

Realization of Floquet topological phases

Periodic modulation is a powerful tool for the realization of topological phases in synthetic quantum systems. In our experiment we realize a periodically driven honeycomb lattice via periodic modulation of the intensities of the individual lattice laser beams. This breaks time-reversal symmetry and leads to a rich variety of Floquet topological phases.
Real-space detection and manipulation of topological edge modes

The team

•     Prof. Immanuel Bloch, co-PI
•     Dr. Raphaël Saint-Jalm, PostDoc
•     Christoph Braun, PhD candidate
•     Alexander Hesse, PhD candidate
•     Johannes Arceri, PhD candidate