Direct Measurement of Topological Numbers with Spins in Diamond

Topological numbers can characterize the transition between different topological phases, which are not described by Landau's paradigm of symmetry breaking. Since the discovery of the quantum Hall effect, more topological phases have been theoretically predicted and experimentally verified. How...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2016-08, Vol.117 (6), p.060503-060503, Article 060503
Main Authors: Kong, Fei, Ju, Chenyong, Liu, Ying, Lei, Chao, Wang, Mengqi, Kong, Xi, Wang, Pengfei, Huang, Pu, Li, Zhaokai, Shi, Fazhan, Jiang, Liang, Du, Jiangfeng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Broken symmetry
Computer simulation
Diamonds
Eigenvalues
Phases
Quantum Hall effect
Quantum wires
Topology
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Summary:Topological numbers can characterize the transition between different topological phases, which are not described by Landau's paradigm of symmetry breaking. Since the discovery of the quantum Hall effect, more topological phases have been theoretically predicted and experimentally verified. However, it is still an experimental challenge to directly measure the topological numbers of various predicted topological phases. In this Letter, we demonstrate quantum simulation of topological phase transition of a quantum wire (QW), by precisely modulating the Hamiltonian of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond. Deploying a quantum algorithm of finding eigenvalues, we reliably extract both the dispersion relations and topological numbers. This method can be further generalized to simulate more complicated topological systems.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.060503