Emergent chiral Higgs mode in $\pi$-flux frustrated lattices

Abstract:Neutral-atom quantum simulators provide a powerful platform for realizing strongly correlated phases, enabling access to dynamical signatures of quasiparticles and symmetry breaking processes. Motivated by recent observations of quantum phases in flux-frustrated ladders with non-vanishing ground state currents, we investigate interacting bosons on the dimerized BBH lattice in two dimensions-originally introduced in the context of higher-order topology. After mapping out the phase diagram, which includes vortex superfluid (V-SF), vortex Mott insulator (V-MI), and featureless Mott insulator (MI) phases, we focus on the integer filling case. There, the MI/V-SF transition simultaneously breaks the $\mathbb Z_2^{T}$ and U(1) symmetries, where $\mathbb Z_2^{T}$ corresponds to time-reversal symmetry (TRS). Using a slave-boson description, we resolve the excitation spectrum across the transition and uncover a chiral Higgs mode whose mass softens at criticality, providing a dynamical hallmark of emergent chirality that manifests via the oscillation of the loop currents in quench dynamics. Our results establish an experimentally realistic setting for probing unconventional TRS-broken phases and quasiparticles with intrinsic chirality in strongly interacting quantum matter.

Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas); Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

arXiv:2601.08925 [cond-mat.quant-gas]

(or arXiv:2601.08925v2 [cond-mat.quant-gas] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.08925 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Phys. Rev. B 114, 225126 (2026)

https://doi.org/10.1103/tfbh-ncfw Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources

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