New study: Realization of strongly-interacting Meissner phases in large bosonic flux ladders
Our recent study is online!
In our newest preprint from the cesium microscope, we present an experimental realization of a strongly-interacting Meissner phase in bosonic ladders with a synthetically engineered gauge field.
Periodically driving a quantum system, also known as Floquet engineering, can be used to realize novel phases of matter that are not present in time-independent Hamiltonians. One important application of this is the engineering of synthetic gauge fields, which allows to break time-reversal-symmetry in neutral atom quantum simulators. By combining artificial gauge fields with strong inter-particle interactions, a promising path towards the controlled study of topologically ordered matter is established. However, experimental studies of many-body systems have so far remained elusive, primarily due to significant heating arising from the interplay between periodic driving and interactions.
In our work, we demonstrate that - through careful engineering of adiabatic preparation paths and selection of parameter regimes - we are able to prepare the strongly-interacting Mott-Meissner phase on flux ladders with 48 sites at half filling. By combining quantum gas microscopy with local basis rotations, we reveal the emerging equilibrium particle currents with local resolution across large systems. We find chiral currents exhibiting a characteristic interaction scaling, providing direct experimental evidence of the interacting Mott-Meissner phase. Moreover, we benchmark density correlations with numerical simulations and find that the effective temperature of the system is on the order of the tunnel coupling. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of scaling periodically driven quantum systems to large, strongly correlated phases, paving the way for exploring topological quantum matter with single-atom resolution and control.
Original publication:
Realization of strongly-interacting Meissner phases in large bosonic flux ladders
Alexander Impertro, SeungJung Huh, Simon Karch, Julian F. Wienand, Immanuel Bloch, and Monika Aidelsburger
