Photon Devil's staircase: photon long-range repulsive interaction in lattices of coupled resonators with Rydberg atoms

摘要

The realization of strong coherent interactions between individual photons isa long-standing goal in science and engineering. In this report, based onrecent experimental setups, we derive a strong photon long-range repulsiveinteraction, by controlling the van der Waals repulsive force between CesiumRydberg atoms located inside different cavities in extendedJaynes-Cummings-Hubbard Lattices. We also find novel quantum phases induced bythis photon long-range repulsive interaction. For example, without photonhopping, a photon Devil's staircase, induced by the breaking of long-rangetranslation symmetry, can emerge. If photon hopping occurs, we predict aphoton-floating solid phase, due to the motion of particle-and hole-likedefects. More importantly, for a large chemical potential in the resonant case,the photon hopping can be frozen even if the hopping term exists. We call thisnew phase the photon-frozen solid phase. In experiments, these predicted phasescould be detedted by measuring the number of polaritons via resonancefluorescence.