Gauge-field induced quantum phases in fermionic optical lattices (C02)

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Project C2 studies novel metastable quantum phases with broken symmetries and the asso-ciated channels of dissipation and decoherence. We employ optical lattices loaded with bos-ons or fermions prepared in higher Bloch bands, which feature orbital degrees of freedom and very long-lived metastable states of broken time-reversal symmetry. In the first funding period of the SFB, we have focused on the formation, detection, and understanding of meta-stable chiral phases, while in the future our focus will shift towards the understanding of dis-sipation and relaxation channels (collaborations with projects B7, C6, C7 and C9) as well as towards the extension of our previous results on bosons to fermionic systems. Here, our ul-timate goal is to explore the possibilities of implementing a topological insulator and orbital BCS superfluidity (collaboration and joint efforts with projects C1, C3 and C4).