Realization of strongly-interacting Meissner phases in large bosonic flux ladders

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the experimental realization of strongly-interacting Mott-Meissner phases in large bosonic flux ladders using a neutral atom quantum simulator, revealing chiral currents and correlations at large scale.

Contribution

It is the first to experimentally realize and observe the strongly-interacting Mott-Meissner phase in large-scale bosonic flux ladders with single-site resolution.

Findings

Observation of chiral currents with interaction scaling

Benchmarking density correlations with numerical simulations

Effective temperature comparable to tunnel coupling

Abstract

Periodically driven quantum systems can realize novel phases of matter that are not present in time-independent Hamiltonians. One important application is the engineering of synthetic gauge fields, which opens the realm of topological many-body physics to neutral atom quantum simulators. In this work, we leverage a neutral atom quantum simulator to experimentally realize the strongly-interacting Mott-Meissner phase in large-scale, bosonic flux ladders with 48 sites at half filling. By combining quantum gas microscopy with local basis rotations, we reveal the emerging equilibrium particle currents with local resolution across large systems. We find chiral currents exhibiting a characteristic interaction scaling, providing direct experimental evidence of the interacting Mott-Meissner phase. Moreover, we benchmark density correlations with numerical simulations and find that the effective temperature of the system is on the order of the tunnel coupling. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of scaling periodically driven quantum systems to large, strongly correlated phases, paving the way for exploring topological quantum matter with single-atom resolution and control.