Quantum Crystals and Laughlin Droplets of Cavity Rydberg Polaritons

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel platform using cavity Rydberg polaritons to realize and study strongly correlated quantum phases of light, such as quantum crystals and Laughlin droplets, enabling exploration of complex quantum many-body phenomena with photons.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to control and induce strong interactions among photons via cavity geometry and Rydberg atoms, leading to emergent quantum states of light.

Findings

Demonstration of crystalline states of light.

Realization of fractional quantum Hall states of photons.

Potential for studying strongly correlated photonic quantum matter.

Abstract

Synthetic quantum materials offer an exciting opportunity to explore quantum many-body physics and novel states of matter under controlled conditions. In particular, they provide an avenue to exchange the short length scales and large energy scales of the solid state for an engineered system with better control over the system Hamiltonian, more accurate state preparation, and higher fidelity state readout. Here we propose a unique platform to study quantum phases of strongly interacting photons. We introduce ideas for controlling the dynamics of individual photons by manipulating the geometry of a multimode optical cavity, and combine them with recently established techniques to mediate strong interactions between photons using Rydberg atoms. We demonstrate that this approach gives rise to crystalline- and fractional quantum Hall- states of light, opening the door to studies of strongly correlated quantum many-body physics in a photonic material.