Evidence for an atomic chiral superfluid with topological excitations

A globally chiral atomic superfluid is induced by time-reversal symmetry breaking in an optical lattice and exhibits global angular momentum, which is expected to lead to topological excitations and the demonstration of a topological superfluid. Topological superfluidity is an important concept in electronic materials as well as ultracold atomic gases(1). However, although progress has been made by hybridizing superconductors with topological substrates, the search for a material-natural or artificial-that intrinsically exhibits topological superfluidity has been ongoing since the discovery of the superfluid He-3-A phase(2). Here we report evidence for a globally chiral atomic superfluid, induced by interaction-driven time-reversal symmetry breaking in the second Bloch band of an optical lattice with hexagonal boron nitride geometry. This realizes a long-lived Bose-Einstein condensate of Rb-87 atoms beyond present limits to orbitally featureless scenarios in the lowest Bloch band. Time-of-flight and band mapping measurements reveal that the local phases and orbital rotations of atoms are spontaneously ordered into a vortex array, showing evidence of the emergence of global angular momentum across the entire lattice. A phenomenological effective model is used to capture the dynamics of Bogoliubov quasi-particle excitations above the ground state, which are shown to exhibit a topological band structure. The observed bosonic phase is expected to exhibit phenomena that are conceptually distinct from, but related to, the quantum anomalous Hall effect(3-7) in electronic condensed matter.