Realizing a bosonic fractional quantum Hall state with ultracold atoms in an optical lattice

The interplay between magnetic fields and interacting particles can lead to exotic phases of matter that exhibit topological order and high degrees of entanglement. Although these phases were discovered in solid-state systems, innovations in the development of artificial gauge fields for ultracold neutral atoms have enabled investigation in a highly controlled manner. However, these experiments have mostly explored the regime of weak interactions, which precludes access to correlated many-body states.

Using a bottom-up strategy based on quantum state engineering of atoms in an optical lattice, we demonstrate the generation of strongly correlated many-body states of bosons in an artificial magnetic field. Starting from a Fock state with a fixed number of particles, we adiabatically transform the system from a topologically trivial ground state into the strongly correlated target state. Numerical simulations of two atoms in a 4x4 lattice support the existence of such an adiabatic path to the ν = ½ fractional quantum Hall state. Simulations have also led to the identification of observables that can be measured to verify the final state.