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Cited by 203Strong Light-Matter InteractionsOrbital Angular Momentum in OpticsTopological Materials and Phenomena

Observation of Laughlin states made of light

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Clark, Logan W., Schine, Nathan, Baum, Claire, Jia, Ningyuan, Simon, Jonathan·2020·Nature
DOI 10.1038/s41586-020-2318-5
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Abstract

Much of the richness in nature emerges because simple constituents form an endless variety of ordered states1. Whereas many such states are fully characterized by symmetries2, interacting quantum systems can exhibit topological order and are instead characterized by intricate patterns of entanglement3,4. A paradigmatic example of topological order is the Laughlin state5, which minimizes the interaction energy of charged particles in a magnetic field and underlies the fractional quantum Hall effect6. Efforts have been made to enhance our understanding of topological order by forming Laughlin states in synthetic systems of ultracold atoms7,8 or photons9–11. Nonetheless, electron gases remain the only systems in which such topological states have been definitively observed6,12–14. Here we create Laughlin-ordered photon pairs using a gas of strongly interacting, lowest-Landau-level polaritons as a photon collider. Initially uncorrelated photons enter a cavity and hybridize with atomic Rydberg excitations to form polaritons15–17, quasiparticles that here behave like electrons in the lowest Landau level owing to a synthetic magnetic field created by Floquet engineering18 a twisted cavity11,19 and by Rydberg-mediated interactions between them16,17,20,21. Polariton pairs collide and self-organize to avoid each other while conserving angular momentum. Our finite-lifetime polaritons only weakly prefer such organization. Therefore, we harness the unique tunability of Floquet polaritons to distil high-fidelity Laughlin states of photons outside the cavity. Particle-resolved measurements show that these photons avoid each other and exhibit angular momentum correlations, the hallmarks of Laughlin physics. This work provides broad prospects for the study of topological quantum light22. Pairs of photons in the Laughlin state are created by mimicking a fractional quantum Hall system using the synthetic magnetic field induced by a twisted optical cavity and Rydberg-mediated polariton interactions.

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  • Combining these elements, a two-photon Laughlin state is selectively created using a coherent laser pump with finite angular momentum and its microscopic structure is probed by looking at correlation functions of the emitted light at different spatial positions and in different orbital angular momentum channels.

    “Combining these elements, a two-photon Laughlin state is selectively created using a coherent laser pump with finite angular momentum and its microscopic structure is probed by looking at the correlation functions of the emitted light at different spatial positions and in different orbital angular momentum channels.”

    From How to exploit driving and dissipation to stabilize and manipulate quantum many-body states (2025) · cites this paper as [152]

  • A closely related experiment has been explored: strong interactions between photons are obtained by coupling light to optically dressed atoms in a Rydberg-EIT configuration, and a synthetic magnetic field in a cylindrically symmetric geometry is obtained by using a twisted optical ring-cavity.

    “A closely related idea has been experimentally explored in a recent experiment [152]: strong interactions between photons are obtained by coupling light to optically dressed atoms in a Rydberg-EIT configuration [31,153]; a synthetic magnetic field in a cylindrically symmetric geometry is obtained by using a twisted optical ring-cavity [154].”

    From How to exploit driving and dissipation to stabilize and manipulate quantum many-body states (2025) · cites this paper as [152]

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1 of the 74 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Landau, L. D. & Lifshitz, E. M. Statistical Physics: Course of Theoretical Physics Vol. 5 (Addison-Wesley, 1958).
  2. Sommer, A., Büchler, H. P. & Simon, J. Quantum crystals and Laughlin droplets of cavity Rydberg polaritons. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.00341 (2015). · arXiv
  3. Gemelke, N., Sarajlic, E. & Chu, S. Rotating few-body atomic systems in the fractional quantum Hall regime. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1007.2677 (2010). · arXiv
  4. Kapit, E., Hafezi, M. & Simon, S. H. Induced self-stabilization in fractional quantum Hall states of light. Phys. Rev. X 4, 031039 (2014).
  5. Lim, H.-T., Togan, E., Kroner, M., Miguel-Sanchez, J. & Imamoğlu, A. Electrically tunable artificial gauge potential for polaritons. Nat. Commun. 8, 14540 (2017).

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Authors
Clark, L. W., Schine, N., Baum, C., Jia, N., & Simon, J.
Affiliations
University of Chicago (US)
ORCID
Venue
Nature
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2020-06-03
Volume
582
Issue
7810
Pages
41-45
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
DOI
10.1038/s41586-020-2318-5
OpenAlex
W3028818982
Semantic Scholar
2984208614cab20d4f98d7fcf31ec5fe740f48d8
Cited by
203
References
74
Citations by year
2026: 14 · 2025: 34 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 72 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 9
FWCI
13.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Nature (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Strong Light-Matter Interactions
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Topological Materials and Phenomena
Keywords
Laughlin state, fractional quantum Hall effect, synthetic magnetic field, Rydberg atoms, polaritons, photon pairs

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