Topological orbital optical lattices with bosons

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The emergence of topological properties in interacting many-body quantum systems is only vaguely understood to date. The use of bosonic atoms loaded into optical lattices opens up an entirely new, yet unexplored world of interacting topological many-body quantum systems not realized in electronic condensed matter. The objective of this proposal is the implementation and study of chiral Bose-Einstein condensates with interaction-induced topological excitations. The proposed research is based upon two recent works of a collaboration of the applicant with two international theory teams. In these works two realistic optical lattice scenarios are proposed and studied, which do not yield topological properties for a single atom, while in the case of many interacting atoms intriguing chiral ground states with rectified interaction-driven vortical currents arise, which exhibit topological excitations. The proposed research aims to identify the predicted topological character via studying the Berry curvature and the presence of chiral edge states.