Analog quantum simulation of small-polaron physics in arrays of neutral atoms with Rydberg-dressed resonant dipole-dipole interaction

TL;DR

This paper proposes an analog quantum simulation platform using Rydberg-dressed neutral atoms to study small-polaron physics, revealing a sharp transition between bare and phonon-dressed excitations and highlighting the platform's advantages for exploring polaron dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a controllable Rydberg-atom-based system for simulating polaron phenomena and demonstrates a sharp small-polaron transition in a specific interaction regime.

Findings

Identified a sharp small-polaron transition at a critical coupling strength.

Showed the system can switch between bare and phonon-dressed excitations.

Highlighted advantages of Rydberg-atom systems for polaron simulation.

Abstract

Recent years have seen growing interest in sharp polaronic transitions in systems with strongly momentum-dependent interactions of an itinerant excitation (electron, hole, exciton) with dispersionless phonons. This work presents a scheme for investigating such phenomena in a controllable fashion within the framework of an analog quantum simulator based on an array of neutral atoms in optical tweezers. The envisioned analog simulator, in which the atoms interact through Rydberg-dressed resonant dipole-dipole interaction, allows one to study the rich interplay of Peierls- and breathing-mode-type excitation-phonon interactions. Based on a numerically-exact treatment of one special case of this system -- namely, the case with equal Peierls- and breathing-mode coupling strengths -- a sharp small-polaron transition was shown to take place for a critical value of the effective excitation-phonon coupling strength. This transition signifies the change from a completely bare (undressed by phonons) excitation below the transition point and a strongly phonon-dressed one (small polaron) above it. This work also highlights the comparative advantages of highly-controllable Rydberg-atom-based systems to other physical platforms for simulating polaronic phenomenology, which could be exploited to study the nonequilibrium dynamics of the small-polaron formation.