TY - JOUR T1 - Topological Flat Bands from Dipolar Spin Systems JF - Physical Review Letters Y1 - 2012 A1 - Norman Y. Yao A1 - Chris R. Laumann A1 - Alexey V. Gorshkov A1 - Steven D. Bennett A1 - Eugene Demler A1 - Peter Zoller A1 - Mikhail D. Lukin AB - We propose and analyze a physical system that naturally admits two-dimensional topological nearly flat bands. Our approach utilizes an array of three-level dipoles (effective S = 1 spins) driven by inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields. The dipolar interactions produce arbitrary uniform background gauge fields for an effective collection of conserved hardcore bosons, namely, the dressed spin-flips. These gauge fields result in topological band structures, whose bandgap can be larger than the corresponding bandwidth. Exact diagonalization of the full interacting Hamiltonian at half-filling reveals the existence of superfluid, crystalline, and supersolid phases. An experimental realization using either ultra-cold polar molecules or spins in the solid state is considered. VL - 109 UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.4479v3 CP - 26 J1 - Phys. Rev. Lett. U5 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.266804 ER -