Abstract
We present a setup with Rydberg atoms for the realization of a bosonic fractional Chern insulator in artificial matter. The suggested setup relies on Rydberg atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice, where excitations hop through the lattice by dipolar exchange interactions and can be interpreted as hard-core bosons. The quantum many-body Hamiltonian is studied within exact diagonalization and the density-matrix renormalization group. We identify experimentally accessible parameters where all signatures indicate the appearance of a fractional state with the same topological properties as the bosonic Laughlin state. We demonstrate an adiabatic ramping procedure, which allows for the preparation of the topological state in a finite system, and demonstrate an experimentally accessible smoking-gun signature for the fractional excitations.
- Received 2 February 2022
- Accepted 2 June 2022
- Corrected 23 September 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.030302
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Corrections
23 September 2022
Correction: The title given in Ref. [14] was incorrect and has been fixed.
Popular Summary
Simulations help to gain insights into physical systems. However, the simulation of quantum systems on classical computers is challenging because the memory for storing a generic quantum state scales exponentially with the number of constituents of the system. That is why Richard Feynman has already proposed to use well-controllable quantum systems as simulators for other quantum systems. While such quantum simulators are not yet powerful and versatile enough to solve major problems—for example, in material or drug design—recent progress enables simulations of quantum many-body states that feature exciting properties. In particular, ground states with intrinsic topological order exhibit remarkable phenomena such as excitations with anyonic statistics, long-range entanglement, and/or robust edge states and are of interest for applications in quantum information. Quantum systems of Rydberg atoms are well suited for simulating them, because of the strong and tunable interactions between these highly excited atoms. Here, we present a blueprint for simulating a so-called fractional Chern insulator with Rydberg atoms that features intrinsic topological order.
The suggested setup relies on Rydberg atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice. We determine an experimentally accessible parameter regime for which we demonstrate the presence of topological order, making use of different numerical methods. We also propose experimental protocols for preparing and probing the system, using current experimental techniques that exist in several laboratories.
Our detailed proposal paves the way for quantum simulations of fractional Chern insulators. Because of the microscopic control of the system within a quantum simulator, this can help to deepen our understanding of topological order.
