Reversal of quantized Hall drifts at noninteracting and interacting topological boundaries

Abstract

The transport properties of gapless edge modes at boundaries between topologically distinct domains are of fundamental and technological importance. We experimentally studied long-distance quantized Hall drifts in a harmonically confined topological pump of ultracold fermionic atoms. We found that quantized drifts halt and reverse their direction when the atoms reach a critical slope of the confining potential, revealing the presence of a topological boundary. The drift reversal corresponded to a band transfer between a band with Chern number C = +1 and another with C = –1 through a gapless edge mode, in agreement with the bulk-edge correspondence for noninteracting particles. Nonzero repulsive Hubbard interactions led to the emergence of an additional edge in the system through a mechanism in which pairs of fermions are split.