The fractional Chern insulator with Rydberg-dressed neutral atoms

Abstract: Topological nontrivial bands can be realized via Rydberg-dressed neutral atoms. We propose a two-dimensional hard-core boson model with a topological ground enrgy at band on a honeycomb lattice, where the particle hopping is realized via van der Waals interaction that exchanges the Rydberg states of two interacting atoms, while nonzero phases associated with hopping is created by transferring the optical phase of laser fields to the atomic pair wave function. Using exactly diagonalization and infinite density matrix renormalization group simulation, we find in the system a fractional Chern insulator phase with a Chern number C = 1/2, which can persist in the presence of weak many-body interactions. Our studies indicate that fractional Chern insulators can be studied with neutral-atom arrays.