Bose-Hubbard simulator with long-range hopping

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a Bose-Hubbard model with long-range hopping using dipolar excitons in a nanoscopic lattice, revealing collective quantum phenomena like sub-radiance and exciton condensation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel platform for simulating strongly-correlated lattice models with long-range interactions using excitonic systems.

Findings

Observation of many-body sub-radiance and algebraic slowdown of radiative decay.

Detection of a threshold increase in temporal coherence indicating exciton condensation.

Evidence of Mott-like phases with spatial order and extended coherence.

Abstract

Enriching condensed-matter systems with quantum optical phenomena currently drives intense research efforts, particularly to introduce collective quantum correlations. Here we access this paradigm, by confining dipolar excitons in a nanoscopic lattice where long-range hopping, and nearest-neighbour dipolar repulsions, dress the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. Long-range hopping is evidenced by the spontaneous buildup of many-body sub-radiance, signalled by an algebraic slowdown of excitons radiative dissipation. In addition, we observe a threshold increase of temporal coherence for dipolar quantum solids only. It suggests that excitons condense in a single sub-radiant state for Mott-like phases. These combine then spatial order and collectively extended coherence, in a single degree of freedom. Our study unveils that nanoscopic exciton arrays provide a unique platform to design new frontiers of strongly-correlated lattice models with long-range correlations.