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
• Christoph Braun, PhD candidate
• Alexander Hesse, PhD candidate
• Johannes Arceri, PhD candidate

Former members

• Dr. Raphaël Saint-Jalm, PostDoc
• Dr. Karen Wintersperger, PhD
• Dr. Jakob Näger, PhD
• Dr. Martin Reitter, PhD
• Valentin Weyerer, Master student
• Simon Karch, Internship student