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