  Topological insulators are a broad class of unconventional materials that are
insulating in the interior but conduct along the edges. This edge transport is
topologically protected and dissipationless. Until recently, all existing
topological insulators, known as quantum Hall states, violated time-reversal
symmetry. However, the discovery of the quantum spin Hall effect demonstrated
the existence of novel topological states not rooted in time-reversal
violations. Here, we lay out an experiment to realize time-reversal topological
insulators in ultra-cold atomic gases subjected to synthetic gauge fields in
the near-field of an atom-chip. In particular, we introduce a feasible scheme
to engineer sharp boundaries where the "edge states" are localized. Besides,
this multi-band system has a large parameter space exhibiting a variety of
quantum phase transitions between topological and normal insulating phases. Due
to their unprecedented controllability, cold-atom systems are ideally suited to
realize topological states of matter and drive the development of topological
quantum computing.
