Competition and interplay between topology and quasi-periodic disorder in Thouless pumping of ultracold atoms

Robustness against perturbations lies at the heart of topological phenomena. If, however, a perturbation such as disorder becomes dominant, it may cause a topological phase transition between topologically non-trivial and trivial phases. Here we experimentally reveal the competition and interplay between topology and quasi-periodic disorder in a Thouless pump realized with ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, by creating a quasi-periodic potential from weak to strong regimes in a controllable manner. We demonstrate a disorder-induced pumping in which the presence of quasi-periodic disorder can induce a non-trivial pump for a specific pumping sequence, whereas no pump is observed in the clean limit. Our highly controllable system, which can also straightforwardly incorporate interatomic interaction, could be a unique platform for studying various disorder-related effects in a wide range of topological quantum phenomena. Topologically protected charge transport, known as Thouless pumping, is realized with cold atoms trapped in quasi-periodic disordered potentials. The pumping is disorder-dependent, illustrating the influence of disorder on the topological properties.