The saga of chiral transitions in arrays of Rydberg atoms

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• Natalia Chepiga (Oxford)
• Thursday 05 March 2026, 14:00-15:30
• Seminar Room 3, RDC.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Gaurav.

Arrays of Rydberg atoms have emerged as one of the most promising platforms for analogue quantum computing and have already stimulated tremendous progress in theoretical understanding of quantum phase transitions in one dimension. But to what extent can we rely on these platforms to predict new physics? In this seminar, I will demonstrate how experiments on Rydberg atoms have inspired the discovery of quantum chiral phase transitions through numerical tensor network simulations on classical computers, and discuss the challenges associated with their experimental realization. I will outline how multi-component Rydberg atoms could be used to manipulate the appearance and extent of the novel transition. Finally, I will briefly discuss the effect of lattice distortion, which is unavoidable in modern experiments due to a finite width of the optical tweezers, on the nature of quantum critical points. This recent study reveals the limitations of currently available experimental platforms and introduces novel theoretical puzzles to be solved.

This talk is part of the Theory of Condensed Matter series.

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