Journal
NEW JOURNAL OF PHYSICS
Volume 24, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP Publishing Ltd
DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/ac4a15
Keywords
Rydberg atoms; correlated hopping; density-dependent Peierls phase; vortex to Meissner phase transition; effective gauge fields
Categories
Funding
- DFG through SFB TR 185 [277625399]
- European Union [817482]
- French-German collaboration for joint projects in NLE Sciences - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
- Agence National de la Recherche (ANR PRCI, project RYBOTIN)
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Investigation of properties in a one-dimensional zig-zag ladder system of spin-orbit coupled Rydberg atoms reveals an association between second-order hopping and effective gauge field, leading to the formation of current vortices.
As shown in recent experiments (Lienhard et al 2020 Phys. Rev. X 10 021031), spin-orbit coupling in systems of Rydberg atoms can give rise to density-dependent Peierls phases in second-order hoppings of Rydberg spin excitations and nearest-neighbor repulsion. We here study theoretically a one-dimensional zig-zag ladder system of such spin-orbit coupled Rydberg atoms at half filling. The second-order hopping is shown to be associated with an effective gauge field, which in mean-field approximation is static and homogeneous. Beyond the mean-field level the gauge potential attains a transverse quantum component whose amplitude is dynamical and linked to density modulations. We here study the effects of this to the possible ground-state phases of the system. In a phase where strong repulsion leads to a density wave, we find that as a consequence of the induced quantum gauge field a regular pattern of current vortices is formed. However also in the absence of density-density interactions the quantum gauge field attains a non-vanishing amplitude. Above a certain critical strength of the second-order hopping the energy gain due to gauge-field induced transport overcomes the energy cost from the associated build-up of density modulations leading to a spontaneous generation of the quantum gauge field.
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