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Physical Review A

Observation of interaction-induced asymmetric chiral currents in a synthetic zigzag ladder

Hongxing Zhao, Huiying Du, Yunfei Wang, Yuqing Li, Chaojie Ren, Jizhou Wu, Wenliang Liu, Liantuan Xiao, Suotang Jia, Qunchao Fan, Jie Ma

Published Jul 18, 2025• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Engineering artificial gauge fields in synthetic lattices offers an efficient avenue for exploring topological states in cold atomic physics and photonics in recent years. Interactions between the system constituents in synthetic dimensions become long ranged, and can induce more striking features. Here, we report the experimental observation of asymmetric chiral currents induced by interactions in a synthetic zigzag ladder with tunable staggered flux, based on the laser-driven coupling of discrete momentum states of ultracold $^{133}\mathrm{Cs}$ atoms. We observe that the staggered flux induces the symmetric chiral dynamics along two legs of the zigzag ladder in a noninteracting regime. However, the flux-dependent chiral currents along the two legs become asymmetric with increasing interactions, and the chiral trajectory is changed dramatically under strong interactions. Our finding opens the way for future exploration of exotic dynamics dictated by an interplay of inhomogeneous gauge fields and interactions in synthetic lattices.

DOI
10.1103/9ldj-wqk4

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Engineering artificial gauge fields in synthetic lattices offers an efficient avenue for exploring topological states in cold atomic physics and photonics in recent years. Interactions between the system constituents in synthetic dimensions become long ranged, and can induce more striking features. Here, we report the experimental observation of asymmetric chiral currents induced by interactions in a synthetic zigzag ladder with tunable staggered flux, based on the laser-driven coupling of discrete momentum states of ultracold 133Cs^{133}\mathrm{Cs}133Cs atoms. We observe that the staggered flux induces the symmetric chiral dynamics along two legs of the zigzag ladder in a noninteracting regime. However, the flux-dependent chiral currents along the two legs become asymmetric with increasing interactions, and the chiral trajectory is changed dramatically under strong interactions. Our finding opens the way for future exploration of exotic dynamics dictated by an interplay of inhomogeneous gauge fields and interactions in synthetic lattices.
Abstract Synthetic gauge fields in synthetic dimensions are now of great interest. This concept provides a convenient manner for exploring topological phases of matter. Here, we report on the first experimental realization of an atom-optically synthetic gauge field based on the synthetic momentum-state lattice of a Bose gas of 133Cs atoms, where magnetically controlled Feshbach resonance is used to tune the interacting lattice into noninteracting regime. Specifically, we engineer a noninteracting one-dimensional lattice into a two-leg ladder with tunable synthetic gauge fields. We observe the flux-dependent populations of atoms and measure the gauge field-induced chiral currents in the two legs. We also show that an inhomogeneous gauge field could control the atomic transport in the ladder. Our results lay the groundwork for using a clean noninteracting synthetic momentum-state lattice to study the gauge field-induced topological physics.
Abstract Quantum matter interacting with gauge fields, an outstanding paradigm in modern physics, underlies the description of various physical systems. Engineering artificial gauge fields in ultracold atoms offers a highly controllable access to the exotic many-body phenomena in these systems, and has stimulated intense interest. Here we implement a triangular flux ladder in the momentum space of ultracold 133Cs atoms, and study the chiral dynamics under tunable interactions. Through measurements of the site-resolved density evolutions, we reveal how the competition between interaction and flux in the frustrated triangular geometry gives rise to flux-dependent localization and biased chiral dynamics. For the latter in particular, the symmetry between the two legs is dynamically broken, which can be attributed to frustration. We then characterize typical dynamic patterns using complementary observables. Our work opens the avenue toward exploring correlated transport in frustrated geometries, where the interplay between interactions and gauge fields plays a key role.
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.
Collective excitations (spin waves) of long-lived atomic hyperfine states can be synthesized into a Bose-Hubbard model in momentum space. We explore many-body ground states and dynamics of a two-leg momentum-space lattice formed by two coupled hyperfine states. Essential ingredients of this setting are a staggered artificial magnetic field engineered by lasers that couple the spin wave states and a state-dependent long-range interaction, which is induced by laser dressing a hyperfine state to a Rydberg state. The Rydberg dressed two-body interaction gives rise to a state-dependent blockade in momentum space and can amplify staggered flux-induced antichiral edge currents in the many-body ground state in the presence of magnetic flux. When the Rydberg dressing is applied to both hyperfine states, exotic sliding insulating and superfluid (supersolid) phases emerge. Because of the Rydberg dressed long-range interaction, spin waves slide along a leg of the momentum-space lattice without costing energy. Our study paves a route to the quantum simulation of topological phases and exotic dynamics with interacting spin waves of atomic hyperfine states in momentum-space lattice.
The gauge field is essential for exploring novel phenomena in modern physics. However, it has not been realized in the recent breakthrough experiment on two-leg superconducting circuits with transmon qubits [Y. Ye et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 050502 (2019)]. Here we present an experimentally feasible method to achieve the synthetic gauge field by introducing ac microwave driving in each qubit. In particular, the effective magnetic flux per plaquette achieved can be tuned independently by properly choosing the driving phases. Moreover, the ground-state chiral currents for single- and two-qubit excitations are obtained and the Meissner-vortex phase transition is found. In the Meissner phase, the ground-state chiral current increases as the magnetic flux increases, while it decreases in the vortex phase. In addition, chiral dynamics, which depends crucially on the initial state of the system, is also revealed. Finally, the possible experimental observations of the chiral current and dynamics are addressed. Our results provide a new route to explore novel many-body properties induced by the interplay of the gauge field, two-leg hoppings, and interaction of photons on superconducting circuits.
I will report on very recent experiments performed at LENS with ultracold 173Yb Fermi gases in artificial gauge fields. We have engineered Raman transitions between different 173Yb nuclear spin states to synthesize an effective lattice dynamics in a finite-sized “extra dimension”, which is encoded in the internal degree of freedom of the atoms [1]. By using this innovative approach, we have realized synthetic magnetic fields for effectively-charged fermions in ladder geometries with a variable number of legs. Direct imaging of the individual legs allowed us to demonstrate the emergence of chiral edge currents and to observe edge-cyclotron orbits propagating along the edges of the system [2], thus providing a direct evidence of a fundamental feature of quantum Hall physics in condensed-matter systems. A. Celi et al., Synthetic gauge fields in synthetic dimensions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 043001 (2014). M. Mancini et al., Observation of chiral edge states with neutral fermions in a synthetic Hall ribbon, preprint arXiv:1502.02495 (2015). ∗Speaker †Corresponding author: fallani@lens.unifi.it sciencesconf.org:bec2015:67564