Spinons are elementary excitations at the core of frustrated quantum magnets. Although it is well established that a pair of spinons can emerge from a magnon via deconfinement, controlled manipulation of individual spinons and direct observation of their deconfinement remain elusive. We propose an artificial gauge field scenario that enables the engineering of specific excited states in quantum spin models. This generates spatially localized individual spinons with high controllability. By applying time-dependent gauge fields, we realize adiabatic braiding of these spinons, as well as their dynamical evolution in a controllable manner. These results not only provide the first direct visualization of individual spinons localized in the bulk, but also point to new possibilities to simulate their confinement process. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of our scenario in Rydberg atoms, which suggests an experimentally viable direction-gauge-field engineering of correlated phenomena in excited states.
Spinons are elementary excitations at the core of frustrated quantum magnets. Although it is well established that a pair of spinons can emerge from a magnon via deconfinement, controlled manipulation of individual spinons and direct observation of their deconfinement remain elusive. We propose an artificial gauge field scenario that enables the engineering of specific excited states in quantum spin models. This generates spatially localized individual spinons with high controllability. By applying time-dependent gauge fields, we realize adiabatic braiding of these spinons, as well as their dynamical evolution in a controllable manner. These results not only provide the first direct visualization of individual spinons localized in the bulk, but also point to new possibilities to simulate their confinement process. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of our scenario in Rydberg atoms, which suggests an experimentally viable direction-gauge-field engineering of correlated phenomena in excited states.
The prospect of studying topological matter with the precision and control of atomic physics has driven the development of many techniques for engineering artificial magnetic fields and spin-orbit interactions. Recently, the idea of introducing nontrivial topology through the use of internal (or external) atomic states as effective "synthetic dimensions" has garnered attraction for its versatility and possible immunity from heating. We engineer tunable gauge fields through the local control of tunneling phases in an effective two-dimensional manifold of discrete atomic momentum states. We demonstrate the ability to create homogeneous gauge fields of arbitrary value, directly imaging the site-resolved dynamics of induced chiral currents. Furthermore, we engineer the first inhomogeneous artificial gauge fields for cold atoms, observing the magnetic reflection of atoms incident upon a step-like variation of an artificial vector potential. These results open new possibilities for the study of topological phases and localization phenomena in atomic gases.
Recent atomic physics experiments and numerical works have reported complementary signatures of the emergence of a topological quantum spin liquid in models with blockade interactions. However, the specific mechanism stabilizing such a phase remains unclear. Here, we introduce an exact relation between an Ising-Higgs lattice gauge theory on the kagome lattice and blockaded models on Ruby lattices. This relation elucidates the origin of previously observed topological spin liquids by directly linking the latter to a deconfined phase of a solvable gauge theory. By means of exact diagonalization and unbiased quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the deconfined phases extend in a broad region of the parameter space; these states are characterized by a large ground state overlap with resonating valence bond wave functions. These blockaded models include both creation or annihilation and hopping dynamics, and can be experimentally realized with Rydberg-dressed atoms, offering novel and controllable platforms for the engineering and characterization of spin liquid states.
In many-body quantum systems the collective behavior of electrons can give rise to emergent phenomena that are not apparent from the underlying microscopic Hamiltonian. A particularly intriguing possibility is that the internal dynamics of a material can spontaneously generate a gauge potential A_mu^eff that couples to the electronic degrees of freedom in a manner formally identical to a conventional electromagnetic gauge field. This paper develops a theoretical framework for such self-generated gauge fields (SGGF) in quantum matter. Starting from a generic Hubbard-type model with long-range interactions, we derive an effective action for the fermions after integrating out high-energy modes. The resulting low-energy theory contains a covariant derivative D_mu = partial_mu - i A_mu^eff, where A_mu^eff emerges from the collective spin and charge fluctuations. We analyze the symmetry properties of the emergent field, show that it can acquire a mass gap or remain gapless depending on the underlying lattice geometry and interaction strength, and discuss the conditions under which it leads to novel topological responses. In particular, we identify a mechanism by which a chiral spin liquid state induces a Chern–Simons term for A_mu^eff, thereby realizing a fractional quantum Hall response without external magnetic fields. The possibility of realizing SGGF in cold atom simulators and in twisted bilayer graphene is highlighted. We conclude that the discovery of self-generated gauge fields opens a new avenue for engineering artificial fundamental interactions in solid-state platforms and for probing the interplay between topology and strong correlations.
Frustrated spin-ice systems support emergent gauge fields and fractionalized quasiparticles that act as magnetic monopoles. Although artificial platforms have enabled their direct visualization, access to their quantum-coherent dynamics has remained limited. Here we realize a programmable dipolar square spin-ice model using a superconducting-qubit quantum annealer, providing access to a previously unexplored quantum-coherent regime of artificial spin ice. By implementing a direct one-to-one mapping between lattice spins and physical qubits, together with engineered extended couplings, we realize effective dipolar interactions on frustrated lattices comprising more than 400 vertices. Tuning transverse-field fluctuations enables us to probe the real-time dynamics of Dirac-string defects and interacting monopole plasmas. We observe super-diffusive monopole transport, with scaling exponents intermediate between classical diffusion and ballistic motion, indicating dynamics beyond classical stochastic relaxation and consistent with coherent propagation within an emergent gauge manifold. These results establish programmable quantum spin ice as a scalable platform for investigating fractionalized excitations and emergent gauge dynamics in engineered quantum matter.
Gauge theories and topological phases play a fundamental role in different areas of physics. The first ones are at the basis of the Standard Model in the field of particle physics, describing the electroweak and strong interactions through a non-Abelian gauge theory. In condensed matter and statistical physics, gauge theories arise as low-energy effective descriptions of strongly correlated phenomena, such as quantum spin liquids and quantum Hall effect. In this realm there is a strong connection with topological phases and order, as emergent gauge fermions and bosons often describe collective excitations of new exotic states of matter of spin models. The discretization on a lattice is a possible way of dealing with the strongly coupled nature of these theories, due to the fact that this formulation at finite volume provides natural regularizing cut-offs, i.e. the lattice size and spacing. This allows for the investigation of different non-perturbative properties both numerically and analytically. Despite the success of these methods, there are various aspects which remain intractable due to the sign or complex action problems, like the out of equilibrium real time evolution or the analysis of quantum chromodynamics with finite chemical potential. In this respect, quantum simulators of many-body systems to simulate high energy physics arise as promising alternatives to face these problems in the near future. They are quantum systems that can be controlled and used to simulate more complicated systems, whose properties could not be analysed with classical computational, experimental or theoretical tools. In the last decades, there has been a huge development in the fields of quantum optics and atomic physics, allowing for the realization highly precise and controllable platforms by means of trapped ions, superconducting circuits, Rydberg atoms and ultracold atoms in optical lattices. This work of Thesis is part of these fields and has different purposes, all of them connected with the study of gauge theories and topological phases. Firstly, we want to develop a reformulation of lattice gauge theories in terms of gauge invariant fields, in a way to deal solely with physical variables directly in the action. Among several possible advantages, a crucial point is that this can be particularly helpful for the construction of consistent approximation schemes, such as mean-field theories, in order to understand and capture some of the physical features of the theory and make the mean-field approximation consistent with the Elitzur theorem, stating that a local gauge symmetry can not be spontaneously broken. As a second point, we face the problem of simulating higher dimensional gauge theories with ultracold atoms. One of the challenges in more than one dimension is indeed the realization of plaquette interaction terms in the Hamiltonian of lattice gauge theories: these can be engineered through four correlated hoppings in perturbation theory, or by means of constrained hoppings in the dual formulation. In this respect, our main target is to set up an ultracold atomic platform generating the plaquette term in two dimensions using only two correlated hoppings, and protecting gauge invariance through angular momentum conservation. The last point we address in the Thesis is related to the analysis of particles moving in static background gauge potentials, i.e. when the considered gauge field has no dynamical term in the action of the system. Indeed, the dynamics of quantum particles in the presence of static gauge fields gives rise to intriguing physical phenomena. In particular, using ultracold atom setups, the realization of artificial gauge potentials can be used to investigate the physics of topological semimetals, such as Weyl or Dirac type. In the last ten years, a lot of attention has been paid to their characterization, due to the appearence of clear theoretical predictions and very well-controlled experimental techniques. We investigate here the relation between topological phase transitions and van Hove singularities, i.e. the discontinuities in the energy derivative of the density of states, in three-dimensional gapless systems. In such materials, topological phase transitions can be defined by changes of the topological invariants of the Fermi sheets, happening at specific singular points. Moreover, Fermi surface singularities result in the presence of the so-called van Hove points. We then present a general argument to relate topological phase transitions and van Hove singularities, and show observable consequences that are related to the transport properties of the system. We exemplify our argument in Weyl systems by analyzing the three-dimensional Hofstadter model for various commensurate fluxes, which offers the opportunity to consider different kinds of Weyl metals and to understand the features of their density of states.
Artificial magnetic fields and spin-orbit couplings have been recently generated in ultracold gases in view of realizing topological states of matter and frustrated magnetism in a highly-controllable environment. Despite being dynamically tunable, such artificial gauge fields are genuinely classical and exhibit no back-action from the neutral particles. Here we go beyond this paradigm, and demonstrate how quantized dynamical gauge fields can be created in mixtures of ultracold atoms in optical lattices. Specifically, we propose a protocol by which atoms of one species carry a magnetic flux felt by another species, hence realizing an instance of flux-attachment. This is obtained by combining coherent lattice modulation techniques with strong Hubbard interactions. We demonstrate how this setting can be arranged so as to implement lattice models displaying a local Z2 gauge symmetry, both in one and two dimensions. We also provide a detailed analysis of a ladder toy model, which features a global Z2 symmetry, and reveal the phase transitions that occur both in the matter and gauge sectors. Mastering flux-attachment in optical lattices envisages a new route towards the realization of strongly-correlated systems with properties dictated by an interplay of dynamical matter and gauge fields.