Observation of a symmetry-protected topological phase of interacting bosons with Rydberg atoms

Abstract

The concept of topological phases is a powerful framework to characterize many-body systems beyond the paradigm of symmetry breaking. In addition to studying topological phases in condensed-matter systems, a large effort is underway to realize topological matter in quantum simulators. Various platforms have already succeeded in designing non-trivial topological single-particle modes [Ozawa2018,Cooper2018]; however, these modes have only been populated with non-interacting particles, where properties of the many-body states are solely determined by the single-particle modes. A current challenge is to introduce strongly interacting particles in these systems and search for emergent properties of the many-body states. Here, we use a quantum simulator based on atoms trapped in optical tweezers and excited to Rydberg levels [Browaeys2020] to realize a symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase of interacting bosons in a 1D-lattice hosting non-trivial topological modes [deLéséleuc2019]. I will present signatures of the single-particle modes and of the many-body SPT phase obtained by half-filling the lattice with hard-core bosons. Especially, I will show that some perturbations affect single-particle modes, but not the many-body phase: in striking contrast from what occurs in non-interacting topological phases. [Ozawa2018,Cooper2018] RMP 91, 015005 and 015006 (2018) [Browaeys2020] Nat. Phys. 16, 132 (2020) [deLéséleuc2019] Science 365, 775 (2019)