Tunable Confinement-Deconfinement Transition in an Ultracold Atom Quantum Simulator

TL;DR

This paper proposes methods to experimentally observe confinement and deconfinement phases in ultracold atom quantum simulators by tuning parameters in the lattice Schwinger and PXP models, enabling full phase diagram exploration.

Contribution

It introduces a scheme to tune the topological angle in the lattice Schwinger model and suggests experimental measurements to detect confinement phases in ultracold atom setups.

Findings

Proposed tuning of the topological angle to access the entire phase diagram.

Suggested measurement of charge localization to identify confinement.

Demonstrated the scheme's applicability to Rydberg atom arrays and optical lattices.

Abstract

The one-dimensional lattice Schwinger model has recently been realized by using bosons in optical lattices. This model contains both confinement and deconfinement phases, whose phase diagram is controlled by the mass of the matter field and the topological angle. Since varying the mass of matter field is straightforward experimentally, we propose how to tune the topological angle, allowing accessing the entire phase diagram. We propose that direct experimental evidence of confinement and deconfinement can be obtained by measuring whether a physical charge is localized around a fixed gauge charge to screen it. We also discuss the PXP model realized in the Rydberg atoms array, which is equivalent to the lattice Schwinger model when all local gauge charges are fixed as zero. Although the gauge charges are fixed, we can alternatively probe the confinement and the deconfinement in the PXP model by studying the relative motion of a pair of a physical charge and an anti-charge. Our scheme can be directly implemented in these two relevant experimental platforms of ultracold atom quantum simulators.