Topologically Induced Avoided Band Crossing in an Optical Checkerboard Lattice

We report on the condensation of bosons in the 4th band of an optical checkerboard lattice providing a topologically induced avoided band crossing involving the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Bloch bands. When the condensate is slowly tuned through the avoided crossing, accelerated band relaxation arises and the zero momentum approximately C4-invariant condensate wave function acquires finite momentum order and reduced C2 symmetry. For faster tuning Landau-Zener oscillations between different superfluid orders arise, which are used to characterize the avoided crossing.