Spin-1 Haldane phase in a chain of Rydberg atoms

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to realize a spin-1 chain in Rydberg atom systems, enabling the exploration of the Haldane phase and its topological properties through tunable interactions and adiabatic state preparation.

Contribution

It introduces a protocol using three Rydberg states near a F"orster resonance to implement a spin-1 chain with a robust Haldane phase, including experimental parameters and an adiabatic preparation scheme.

Findings

Identification of a highly tunable Hamiltonian in Rydberg systems

Demonstration of a robust Haldane phase via DMRG simulations

Proposal of an experimentally feasible scheme to probe spin fractionalization

Abstract

We present a protocol to implement a spin-1 chain in Rydberg systems using three Rydberg states close to a F\"orster resonance. In addition to dipole-dipole interactions, strong van der Waals interactions naturally appear due to the presence of the F\"orster resonance and give rise to a highly tunable Hamiltonian. The resulting phase diagram is studied using the infinite density-matrix renormalization group and reveals a highly robust Haldane phase -- a prime example of a symmetry protected topological phase. We find experimentally accessible parameters to probe the Haldane phase in current Rydberg systems, and demonstrate an efficient adiabatic preparation scheme. This paves the way to probe the remarkable properties of spin fractionalization in the Haldane phase.