Realization and detection of Kitaev quantum spin liquid with Rydberg atoms

Abstract

The Kitaev chiral spin liquid has captured widespread interest in recent decades because of its intrinsic non-Abelian excitations, yet the experimental realization is challenging. Here we propose to realize and detect Kitaev chiral spin liquid in a deformed honeycomb array of Rydberg atoms. Through a novel laser-assisted dipole-dipole interaction mechanism to generate both effective hopping and pairing terms for hard-core bosons, together with van der Waals interactions, we achieve the pure Kitaev model with high precision. The gapped non-Abelian spin liquid phase is then obtained by introducing Zeeman fields. Moreover, we propose innovative strategies to probe the chiral Majorana edge modes by light Bragg scattering and by imagining their chiral motion. Our work broadens the range of exotic quantum many-body phases that can be realized and detected in atomic systems, and makes an important step toward manipulating non-Abelian anyons.