title: Continuous Preparation of a Fractional Chern Insulator.
abstract: We present evidence of a direct, continuous quantum phase transition between a Bose superfluid and the ν=1/2 fractional Chern insulator in a microscopic lattice model. In the process, we develop a detailed field theoretic description of this transition in terms of the low energy vortex dynamics. The theory explicitly accounts for the structure of lattice symmetries and predicts a Landau forbidden transition that is protected by inversion. That the transition is continuous enables the quasiadiabatic preparation of the fractional Chern insulator in nonequilibrium, quantum optical systems.
authors.affiliation: Microsoft Station Q, Elings Hall, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Barkeshli
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: N Y
authors.initials: NY
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: C R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Laumann