Synthetic Gauge Fields for Lattices with Multi-Orbital Unit Cells: Routes towards a $\pi$-flux Dice Lattice with Flat Bands

TL;DR

This paper presents a versatile method for creating synthetic magnetic fields in complex lattice structures using cold atomic gases, enabling the realization of dice lattices with flat bands and large band gaps for advanced quantum simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to generate synthetic gauge fields in complex lattices, specifically demonstrating the creation of a dice lattice with half a flux quantum per plaquette and flat bands.

Findings

Successfully constructs a dice lattice with flux density of half a flux quantum per plaquette.

Demonstrates robustness of the approach even in shallow optical lattices.

Proposes an alternative laser-induced hopping scheme for fully frustrated dice lattices.

Abstract

We propose a general strategy for generating synthetic magnetic fields in complex lattices with non-trivial connectivity based on light-matter coupling in cold atomic gases. Our approach starts from an underlying optical flux lattice in which flux arises by coupling several internal states. Starting from a high symmetry optical flux lattice, we superpose a scalar potential with a super- or sublattice period in order to eliminate links between the original lattice sites. As an alternative to changing connectivity, the approach can also be used to create or remove lattice sites from the underlying parent lattice. To demonstrate our concept, we consider the dice lattice geometry as an explicit example, and construct a dice lattice with a flux density of half a flux quantum per plaquette, providing a pathway to flat bands with a large band gap. While the intuition for our proposal stems from analysis of deep optical lattices, we demonstrate that the approach is robust even for shallow optical flux lattices far from the tight-binding limit. We also provide an alternative experimental proposal to realize a synthetic gauge field in a fully frustrated dice lattice based on laser-induced hoppings along individual bonds of the lattice, again involving a superlattice potential. In this approach, atoms with a long-lived excited state are trapped using an 'anti-magic' wavelength of light, allowing the desired complex hopping elements to be induced in a specific laser coupling scheme for the dice lattice geometry. We conclude by comparing the complexity of these alternative approaches, and advocate that complex optical flux lattices provide the more elegant and easily generalisable strategy.