Photon Long-Range Repulsive Interaction in the Jaynes-Cummings Lattice with Rydberg Atoms

Yuanwei Zhang, Jingtao Fan, J. -Q. Liang, Jie Ma, Gang Chen, Suotang Jia, Franco Nori

Published 2014-10-21Version 1

We propose how to realize a strong photon long-range repulsive interaction by controlling the van der Waals repulsive force between Rydberg atoms located in different cavities in extended Jaynes-Cumings-Hubbard lattices. We find that this photon long-range repulsive interaction can generate complex quantum phases, some of which have no analogy in condensed-matter and atomic physics. For example, without photon hopping, a photon devil's staircase induced by the breaking of long-range translation symmetry can emerge. If photon hopping occurs, we predict a photon-floating solid phase, due to the motion of particle- and hole-like defects. More importantly, for a large chemical potential in the resonant case, the photon hopping can detected by measuring the number of polaritons via resonance fluorescence.