Rice-Mele model with topological solitons in an optical lattice

Abstract

Attractive ultra-cold fermions trapped in a one-dimensional periodically shaken opticla lattices are considered. For an appropriate resonant shaking the system realizes paradigmatic dimes physics described by Rice-Mele model. The important feature of our system is the possible presence of controlled defects. They result in the creation of topologically protected loclaized modes carrying fractional particle number. Their possible experimental signatures are discussed.