Experimentally accessible scheme for a fractional Chern insulator in Rydberg atoms

TL;DR

This paper proposes a Rydberg atom setup in a honeycomb lattice to realize a fractional Chern insulator, demonstrating topological states and fractional excitations through numerical methods and an adiabatic preparation scheme.

Contribution

It introduces a feasible experimental scheme for creating a bosonic fractional Chern insulator with Rydberg atoms and details how to prepare and detect the topological state.

Findings

Identification of parameters for fractional Chern insulator formation

Demonstration of adiabatic ramping to prepare topological states

Proposal of an experimental signature for fractional excitations

Abstract

We present a setup with Rydberg atoms for the realization of a bosonic fractional Chern insulator in artificial matter. The suggested setup relies on Rydberg atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice, where excitations hop through the lattice by dipolar exchange interactions, and can be interpreted as hard-core bosons. The quantum many-body Hamiltonian is studied within exact diagonalization and DMRG. We identify experimentally accessible parameters where all signatures indicate the appearance of a fractional state with the same topological properties as the $\nu=1/2$ bosonic Laughlin state. We demonstrate an adiabatic ramping procedure, which allows for the preparation of the topological state in a finite system, and demonstrate an experimentally accessible smoking gun signature for the fractional excitations.