Realistic Time-Reversal Invariant Topological Insulators With Neutral Atoms

We lay out an experiment to realize time-reversal invariant topological insulators in alkali atomic gases. We introduce an original method to synthesize a gauge field in the near-field of an atom-chip, which effectively mimics the effects of spin-orbit coupling and produces quantum spin-Hall states. We also propose a feasible scheme to engineer sharp boundaries where the hallmark edge states are localized. Our multi-band system has a large parameter space exhibiting a variety of quantum phase transitions between topological and normal insulating phases. Due to their remarkable versatility, cold-atom systems are ideally suited to realize topological states of matter and drive the development of topological quantum computing.