Realization of a doped quantum antiferromagnet with dipolar tunnelings in a Rydberg tweezer array

Abstract

Doping an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator is central to our understanding of a variety of phenomena in strongly-correlated electrons, including high-temperature superconductors. To describe the competition between tunneling $t$ of hole dopants and antiferromagnetic (AFM) spin interactions $J$, theoretical and numerical studies often focus on the paradigmatic $t$-$J$ model, and the direct analog quantum simulation of this model in the relevant regime of high-particle density has long been sought. Here, we realize a doped quantum antiferromagnet with next-nearest neighbour (NNN) tunnelings $t'$ and hard-core bosonic holes using a Rydberg tweezer platform. We utilize coherent dynamics between three Rydberg levels, encoding spins and holes, to implement a tunable bosonic $t$-$J$-$V$ model allowing us to study previously inaccessible parameter regimes. We observe dynamical phase separation between hole and spin domains for $|t/J|\ll 1$, and demonstrate the formation of repulsively bound hole pairs in a variety of spin backgrounds. The interference between NNN tunnelings $t'$ and perturbative pair tunneling gives rise to light and heavy pairs depending on the sign of $t$. Using the single-site control allows us to study the dynamics of a single hole in 2D square lattice (anti)ferromagnets. The model we implement extends the toolbox of Rydberg tweezer experiments beyond spin-1/2 models to a larger class of $t$-$J$ and spin-$1$ models.