Emergent devil's staircase without particle-hole symmetry in Rydberg quantum gases with competing attractive and repulsive interactions
The devil's staircase is a fractal structure that characterizes the ground state of one-dimensional classical lattice gases with long-range repulsive convex interactions. Its plateaus mark regions of stability for specific filling fractions which are controlled by a chemical potential. Typicall...
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| Format: | Article |
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American Physical Society
2015
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/30988/ |
| _version_ | 1848794104836653056 |
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| author | Lan, Zhihao Minář, Jiří Levi, Emanuele Li, Weibin Lesanovsky, Igor |
| author_facet | Lan, Zhihao Minář, Jiří Levi, Emanuele Li, Weibin Lesanovsky, Igor |
| author_sort | Lan, Zhihao |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | The devil's staircase is a fractal structure that characterizes the ground state of one-dimensional classical lattice gases with long-range repulsive convex interactions. Its plateaus mark regions of stability for specific filling fractions which are controlled by a chemical potential. Typically such staircase has an explicit particle-hole symmetry, i.e., the staircase at more than half-filling can be trivially extracted from the one at less than half filling by exchanging the roles of holes and particles. Here we introduce a quantum spin chain with competing short-range attractive and long-range repulsive interactions, i.e. a non-convex potential. In the classical limit the ground state features generalized Wigner crystals that --- depending on the filling fraction --- are either composed of dimer particles or dimer holes which results in an emergent complete devil's staircase without explicit particle-hole symmetry of the underlying microscopic model. In our system the particle-hole symmetry is lifted due to the fact that the staircase is controlled through a two-body interaction rather than a one-body chemical potential. The introduction of quantum fluctuations through a transverse field melts the staircase and ultimately makes the system enter a paramagnetic phase. For intermediate transverse field strengths, however, we identify a region, where the density-density correlations suggest the emergence of quasi long-range order. We discuss how this physics can be explored with Rydberg-dressed atoms held in a lattice. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:10:54Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-30988 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:10:54Z |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publisher | American Physical Society |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-309882020-05-04T17:23:47Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/30988/ Emergent devil's staircase without particle-hole symmetry in Rydberg quantum gases with competing attractive and repulsive interactions Lan, Zhihao Minář, Jiří Levi, Emanuele Li, Weibin Lesanovsky, Igor The devil's staircase is a fractal structure that characterizes the ground state of one-dimensional classical lattice gases with long-range repulsive convex interactions. Its plateaus mark regions of stability for specific filling fractions which are controlled by a chemical potential. Typically such staircase has an explicit particle-hole symmetry, i.e., the staircase at more than half-filling can be trivially extracted from the one at less than half filling by exchanging the roles of holes and particles. Here we introduce a quantum spin chain with competing short-range attractive and long-range repulsive interactions, i.e. a non-convex potential. In the classical limit the ground state features generalized Wigner crystals that --- depending on the filling fraction --- are either composed of dimer particles or dimer holes which results in an emergent complete devil's staircase without explicit particle-hole symmetry of the underlying microscopic model. In our system the particle-hole symmetry is lifted due to the fact that the staircase is controlled through a two-body interaction rather than a one-body chemical potential. The introduction of quantum fluctuations through a transverse field melts the staircase and ultimately makes the system enter a paramagnetic phase. For intermediate transverse field strengths, however, we identify a region, where the density-density correlations suggest the emergence of quasi long-range order. We discuss how this physics can be explored with Rydberg-dressed atoms held in a lattice. American Physical Society 2015-11-11 Article PeerReviewed Lan, Zhihao, Minář, Jiří, Levi, Emanuele, Li, Weibin and Lesanovsky, Igor (2015) Emergent devil's staircase without particle-hole symmetry in Rydberg quantum gases with competing attractive and repulsive interactions. Physical Review Letters, 115 . 203001/1-203001/5. ISSN 1079-7114 http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.203001 doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.203001 doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.203001 |
| spellingShingle | Lan, Zhihao Minář, Jiří Levi, Emanuele Li, Weibin Lesanovsky, Igor Emergent devil's staircase without particle-hole symmetry in Rydberg quantum gases with competing attractive and repulsive interactions |
| title | Emergent devil's staircase without particle-hole symmetry in Rydberg quantum gases with competing attractive and repulsive interactions |
| title_full | Emergent devil's staircase without particle-hole symmetry in Rydberg quantum gases with competing attractive and repulsive interactions |
| title_fullStr | Emergent devil's staircase without particle-hole symmetry in Rydberg quantum gases with competing attractive and repulsive interactions |
| title_full_unstemmed | Emergent devil's staircase without particle-hole symmetry in Rydberg quantum gases with competing attractive and repulsive interactions |
| title_short | Emergent devil's staircase without particle-hole symmetry in Rydberg quantum gases with competing attractive and repulsive interactions |
| title_sort | emergent devil's staircase without particle-hole symmetry in rydberg quantum gases with competing attractive and repulsive interactions |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/30988/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/30988/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/30988/ |