Observation of chiral edge transport in a rapidly rotating quantum gas

Abstract

The frictionless directional propagation of particles at the boundary of topological materials is a striking transport phenomenon. These chiral edge modes lie at the heart of the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects, and their robustness against noise and disorder reflects the quantization of Hall conductivity in these systems. Despite their importance, the controllable injection of edge modes, and direct imaging of their propagation, structure and dynamics, remains challenging. Here we demonstrate the distillation of chiral edge modes in a rapidly rotating bosonic superfluid confined by an optical boundary. By tuning the wall sharpness, we reveal the smooth crossover between soft wall behaviour in which the propagation speed is proportional to wall steepness and the hard wall regime that exhibits chiral free particles. From the skipping motion of atoms along the boundary we infer the energy gap between the ground and first excited edge bands, and reveal its evolution from the bulk Landau level splitting for a soft boundary to the hard wall limit. Finally, we demonstrate the robustness of edge propagation against disorder by projecting an optical obstacle that is static in the rotating frame. Edge modes are a key feature of topological materials, but their propagation is difficult to directly observe in condensed matter systems. The controlled injection and propagation of chiral edge modes has now been shown in a rotating ultracold gas.