Amorphous quantum magnets in a two-dimensional Rydberg atom array

Abstract

Amorphous solids, i.e., systems which feature well-defined short-range properties but lack long-range order, constitute an important research topic in condensed matter. While their microscopic structure is known to differ from their crystalline counterpart, there are still many open questions concerning the emergent collective behavior in amorphous materials. This is particularly the case in the quantum regime, where the numerical simulations are extremely challenging. In this article, we instead propose to explore amorphous quantum magnets with an analog quantum simulator. To this end, we first present an algorithm to generate amorphous quantum magnets, suitable for Rydberg simulators of the Ising model. Subsequently, we use semiclassical approaches to get a preliminary insight of the physics of the model. In particular, for ferromagnetic interactions, we calculate mean-field phase diagrams, and use the linear-spin-wave theory to study localization properties and dynamical structure factors of the excitations. For antiferromagnetic interactions, we show that amorphous magnets exhibit a complex classical energy landscape by means of simulated annealing. Finally, we outline an experimental proposal based on Rydberg atoms in programmable tweezer arrays, thus opening the road towards the study of amorphous quantum magnets in regimes difficult to simulate classically.