title: Coherence-Driven Topological Transition in Quantum Metamaterials.
abstract: We introduce and theoretically demonstrate a quantum metamaterial made of dense ultracold neutral atoms loaded into an inherently defect-free artificial crystal of light, immune to well-known critical challenges inevitable in conventional solid-state platforms. We demonstrate an all-optical control, on ultrafast time scales, over the photonic topological transition of the isofrequency contour from an open to closed topology at the same frequency. This atomic lattice quantum metamaterial enables a dynamic manipulation of the decay rate branching ratio of a probe quantum emitter by more than an order of magnitude. Our proposal may lead to practically lossless, tunable, and topologically reconfigurable quantum metamaterials, for single or few-photon-level applications as varied as quantum sensing, quantum information processing, and quantum simulations using metamaterials.
authors.affiliation: NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Pankaj K
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Jha
authors.affiliation: NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mrejen
authors.affiliation: NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Jeongmin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Chihhui
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Center for Nonlinear Sciences and Department of Physics, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas 76203, USA.
authors.forename: Yuri V
authors.initials: YV
authors.lastname: Rostovtsev
authors.affiliation: NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.|Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road Berkeley, California 94720, USA.|Department of Physics, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Xiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang