Tunable photon-mediated interactions between spin-1 systems

Quantum simulators are highly controllable devices that exploit quantum effects to answer questions about another system. They can be built using ultracold atoms, superconducting circuits or atoms interacting with nanophotonic structures [1]. In this last system the nanophotonic environment can be tailored to generate exotic photon-mediated interactions between atoms [2], allowing the exploration of a wide range of physical models. However, these atoms have been typically considered as two-level systems, limiting the models explored [3]. Our work considers the full atomic hyperfine structure to go beyond this and study effective spin-1 interactions between the emitters, where Raman-assisted transitions allow a mapping to the Ising or XX spin-1 interactions. These results could be interesting both in quantum simulation (to study spin chains or even simulating some lattice gauge theories) and quantum computation (to obtain quantum gates between qutrits).

[1] E. Altman et al., PRX Quantum 2, 017003 (2021).

[2] D. E. Chang et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 90, 031002 (2018).

[3] A. González-Tudela et al., Nature Photonics volume 9, 320–325 (2015).