We investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics of interacting bosons in a two-leg ring ladder pierced by an artificial magnetic flux, where the particles are initially localized in the central sites of both rings, and the ac-driven local energy shifts are applied to the remaining lattice sites. Within the mean-field approximation, we demonstrate the emergence of nonlinear self-trapping for strong interparticle interactions, and characterize the distinct excitation regimes in the absence of the inter-ring tunneling. The artificial magnetic flux typically introduces Peierls phase factors, which induces complex-valued hopping amplitudes and leads to directed net particle currents along the chains. By further incorporating the finite inter-ring coupling and biased intra-ring hopping, we reveal that the tuning of the drive frequency and Peierls phase allows the precise control over both the intensity and direction of particle currents, which facilitates the transition between chiral and antichiral dynamics. These findings offer insights into the coherent manipulation of matter-wave transports in closed-loop lattice configurations and the exploration of nonequilibrium synthetic quantum systems in related fields.
We investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics of interacting bosons in a two-leg ring ladder pierced by an artificial magnetic flux, where the particles are initially localized in the central sites of both rings, and the ac-driven local energy shifts are applied to the remaining lattice sites. Within the mean-field approximation, we demonstrate the emergence of nonlinear self-trapping for strong interparticle interactions, and characterize the distinct excitation regimes in the absence of the inter-ring tunneling. The artificial magnetic flux typically introduces Peierls phase factors, which induces complex-valued hopping amplitudes and leads to directed net particle currents along the chains. By further incorporating the finite inter-ring coupling and biased intra-ring hopping, we reveal that the tuning of the drive frequency and Peierls phase allows the precise control over both the intensity and direction of particle currents, which facilitates the transition between chiral and antichiral dynamics. These findings offer insights into the coherent manipulation of matter-wave transports in closed-loop lattice configurations and the exploration of nonequilibrium synthetic quantum systems in related fields.
Non-Hermiticity and synthetic gauge fields play two fundamental roles in engineering exotic phases and dynamics in artificial quantum systems. Here, we explore the mean-field dynamics of interacting bosons in a two-leg ladder with synthetic magnetic flux and nonreciprocal hopping under the open boundary condition. In the Hermitian limit, we showcase the breakdown of the flux-driven chiral dynamics due to the nonlinear self-trapping effect. We further find that the nonreciprocity can drive the transition between chiral dynamics and antichiral dynamics. The antichiral motion is manifested as the non-Hermitian skin dynamics along the same direction on two legs that are not suppressed by the magnetic flux, while the chiral-antichiral transition is flux tunable. We also reveal the trap-skin dynamics with the coexistence of the self-tapping and skin dynamics in the ladder. Dynamical phase diagrams with respect to the chiral-antichiral dynamics, skin dynamics, self-trapping dynamics, and trap-skin dynamics are presented. Our results shed light on intriguing dynamical phenomena under the interplay among non-Hermiticity, nonlinearity, and artificial gauge fields.
The bosonic magnetic ladder, a universal and the simplest model to reproduce the coupled effects of orbital magnetic field and optical lattices, provides an ideal platform for studying spin-orbit coupling, quantum phase transition and chiral topological states of matter. Here, considering both the on-site and rungwise interactions, the ground-state and chiral nonequilibrium dynamics of the bosonic magnetic ladder under an external harmonic trap are studied analytically and numerically. The threshold for the ground-state transition from the zero momentum state to the plane wave state is obtained. We find that the external harmonic potential has an important impact on the phase transition, which strongly depends on the magnetic field and an effective atomic interaction introduced by the interplay of on-site and rungwise interactions. The ground-state phase transitions can be well manipulated by changing the strengths of the external harmonic trap and rungwise interaction. Furthermore, by quenching the harmonic trap, rich nonlinear modes coupling and chiral nonequilibrium dynamics are revealed, which have distinct characteristics in different phases. Strong spin-momentum locking, softening of the collective modes and anharmonic collective dynamics are observed near the phase transition region. Particularly, novel nonlinear chiral dynamics induced by the interplay of strong spin-momentum locking and external trapping near the phase transition region are obtained, including the chiral out-of-phase oscillation of particles in the two legs (i.e., chiral opposite oscillation of particles in the two legs), chiral alternate oscillation of particles between the two legs (i.e., particles primarily populate the right (left) leg when moving away (returning to) the initial position), and chiral focusing-expanding transition of atomic wavepacket on the two legs (i.e., the wave packet exhibits a focused (expanded) state when moving toward (away from) the equilibrium point). Chiral dephasing and phase revival occur near the phase transition region, while coherent harmonic collective dynamics persists far away from the phase transition point. The observed chiralities can be well manipulated by the magnetic field.
Motivated by experiments exploring the physics of neutral atoms in artificial magnetic fields, we study the ground state of bosons interacting with long-range dipolar interactions on a two-leg ladder. We focus on the limit where the number of particles per site is large and the interactions are weak. Using two complementary variational approaches, we find rich physics driven by the long-range forces. Generically, long-range interactions tend to destroy the Meissner phase in favor of modulated density wave phases. For example, nearest-neighbor interactions produce an interleg charge density wave phase, where the total density remains uniform but the density on each leg of the ladder is modulating in space, out of phase with one another. Next-nearest-neighbor interactions lead to a fully modulated biased ladder phase, where all of the particles are on one leg of the ladder. This state simultaneously breaks Z2 reflection symmetry and U(1) translation symmetry. For values of the flux near $\ensuremath{\phi}=\ensuremath{\pi}$, we find a switching effect for arbitrarily weak interactions, where the density is modulated but the chiral current changes sign on every plaquette. Arbitrarily weak attractive interactions along the rungs destroy the Meissner phase completely, in favor of a modulated density wave phase. Remarkably, varying the rung to ladder hopping produces a cascade of first-order transitions between modulated density wave states with different wave vectors, which manifests itself as discrete jumps in the chiral current. Polarizing the dipoles along the ladder direction yields a region of phase space where a stable biased ladder phase occurs even at arbitrarily weak rung hopping. We discuss the experimental consequences of our work and draw connections between our work and recent experiments on cold atoms in synthetic dimensions.
We study the quantum walk of two interacting bosons on a two-leg ladder lattice in the presence of an artificial magnetic field. By considering a uniform flux piercing through the ladder, we show that in the limit of strong on-site repulsion and dominant rung hopping, an initially slow dynamics becomes fast, then slow and fast again with increase in the flux strength, indicating a re-entrant dynamics. This unusual behavior is found to be associated with the formation, breaking, and reformation of a bound pair state along the rung of the ladder. In addition to this we also find a reentrant behavior in the chiral dynamics where the chirality in the system first increases and then decreases with increase in interaction. We establish this unusual reentrant behavior in the dynamics by analyzing the radial velocity, spreading of correlation, center-of-mass shearing, and energy band diagrams.
We investigate the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a one-dimensional ring-shaped lattice with the Peierls phase and site-dependent modulations, where the condensate is confined in a single deep trap and the interparticle interaction strength is modulated by a time-periodic driving field. The system has a finite spectrum, which limits the excitation regimes, and the Peierls phase typically induces imbalanced complex hopping amplitudes in each direction, leading to nonzero net particle currents along the lattice chain, which can hold nearly persistent even when the driving field is turned off after half of the period. The configuration provides a specific way for the coherent control of particle currents in many-body quantum systems with the help of an external driving field and promotes the possible applications in future closed-loop atom circuits.
Abstract Periodically driven quantum systems can realize phases of matter that do not appear in time-independent Hamiltonians. One application is the engineering of synthetic gauge fields, which enables the study of topological many-body physics with neutral atom quantum simulators. Here we realize the strongly interacting Mott–Meissner phase—a state combining interaction-induced localization with chiral currents induced by an artificial magnetic field—in large-scale bosonic flux ladders with 48 sites at half-filling using a neutral atom quantum simulator. 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. These results establish the feasibility of scaling periodically driven quantum systems to large, strongly correlated phases, enabling further studies of topological quantum matter with single-atom resolution and control.