Kavli Affiliate: Natalia Chepiga
| First 5 Authors: Jose Soto-Garcia, Natalia Chepiga, , ,
| Summary:
Chains of Rydberg atoms have emerged as an amazing platform for simulating
quantum physics in low dimensions. This remarkable success is due to the
versatility of lattice geometries achieved by trapping neutral atoms with
optical tweezers. On a given lattice, the competition between the repulsive van
der Waals potential and the detuning of the laser frequency brings the atoms to
highly excited Rydberg states, leading to a variety of exotic phases and
quantum phase transitions. Experiments on the simplest one-dimensional array of
Rydberg atoms have stimulated tremendous progress in understanding quantum
phase transitions into crystalline phases. In addition to standard conformal
transitions, numerical simulations have predicted two exotic chiral transitions
and a floating phase, raising the question of their experimental realization.
However, in reality, optical tweezers have a finite width, which results in
small deviations in interatomic distances and disorder in interaction strength.
However, disorder can affect the nature of transitions. Infinite randomness
criticality in the random transverse-field Ising chain is perhaps the most
prominent examples. In this paper, we demonstrate how the disorder typical for
Rydberg experiments alters the Ising transition to the period-2 phase.
Following the experimental protocol closely, we probe the nature of quantum
criticality with Kibble-Zurek dynamics. While we clearly observe infinite
randomness for strong disorder and large system sizes, we also report a
crossover into a clean Ising transition, which is visible for small system
sizes and weak disorder. Our results clearly demonstrate an additional
technical constraint on the scalability of Rydberg-based quantum simulators.
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