Observation of frustrated chiral dynamics in an interacting triangular flux ladder.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37985772.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-43204-3 and PMC identifier 10662351.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Quantum matter interacting with gauge fields, an outstanding paradigm in modern physics, underlies the description of various physical systems. Engineering artificial gauge fields in ultracold atoms offers a highly controllable access to the exotic many-body phenomena in these systems, and has stimulated intense interest. Here we implement a triangular flux ladder in the momentum space of ultracold 133Cs atoms, and study the chiral dynamics under tunable interactions. Through measurements of the site-resolved density evolutions, we reveal how the competition between interaction and flux in the frustrated triangular geometry gives rise to flux-dependent localization and biased chiral dynamics. For the latter in particular, the symmetry between the two legs is dynamically broken, which can be attributed to frustration. We then characterize typical dynamic patterns using complementary observables. Our work opens the avenue toward exploring correlated transport in frustrated geometries, where the interplay between interactions and gauge fields plays a key role.