Observation of a topological edge state among localized bulk states in the anisotropic quantum Rabi model

Abstract:Topological phases are governed by discrete symmetries that protect boundary modes against local perturbations. When translational periodicity is absent, the bulk states also become localized, so that a topological edge state can no longer be distinguished from them by spatial localization alone. Here, we investigate the topological edge state (TES) and bulk eigenstates of the anisotropic quantum Rabi model (AQRM) in a trapped-ion quantum simulator. The AQRM hosts a topological phase in a one-dimensional synthetic lattice, whose translational symmetry is broken by the non-uniform couplings scaling with the site index. While both the TES and bulk states show localized distributions, we find that the TES exhibits well-defined chirality and near-complete spin--boson separability as signatures of the topological phase, in contrast to the bulk states. Phase-space tomography further reveals that the bosonic component of the TES is a squeezed vacuum state, with squeezing up to 6.45 dB. These results identify the TES through its intrinsic topological signatures and establish eigenstate-level characterization as a route to probing topological phenomena.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph)

arXiv:2609.34332 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2609.34332v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.34332 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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