Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Analog quantum simulation of chiral magnetic dynamics using optical superlattices

Sabhyata Gupta* and Luis Santos†

  • *Contact author: sabhyata.gupta@itp.uni-hannover.de
  • †Contact author: santos@itp.uni-hannover.de

Phys. Rev. A 114, 033321 – Published 17 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/hr8d-ttj8

Abstract

We propose an analog quantum simulation of chiral magnetic dynamics using ultracold atoms in an optical superlattice. The massive Schwinger model in the zero gauge coupling limit maps onto the Rice-Mele model, with the fermion mass and topological angle encoded in the superlattice parameters. We study the real-time dynamics of the vector current following two quench protocols that drive continuous chirality injection and chirality relaxation. Simulations with realistic superlattice parameters and experimental noise demonstrate clear mass dependence of the current dynamics in both protocols, robust against experimental imperfections. The vector current may be directly measurable via single-bond-resolved detection, establishing cold atom superlattices as a viable platform for probing nonequilibrium chiral phenomena.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (32)

  1. D. E. Kharzeev, The chiral magnetic effect and anomaly-induced transport, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 75, 133 (2014).
  2. D. Kharzeev, J. Liao, S. Voloshin, and G. Wang, Chiral magnetic and vortical effects in high-energy nuclear collisions—A status report, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 88, 1 (2016).
  3. D. T. Son and B. Z. Spivak, Chiral anomaly and classical negative magnetoresistance of Weyl metals, Phys. Rev. B 88, 104412 (2013).
  4. B. Z. Spivak and A. V. Andreev, Magnetotransport phenomena related to the chiral anomaly in Weyl semimetals, Phys. Rev. B 93, 085107 (2016).
  5. Q. Li, D. E. Kharzeev, C. Zhang, Y. Huang, I. Pletikosić, A. V. Fedorov, R. D. Zhong, J. A. Schneeloch, G. D. Gu, and T. Valla, Chiral magnetic effect in ZrTe5, Nat. Phys. 12, 550 (2016).
  6. A. L. Levy, A. B. Sushkov, F. Liu, B. Shen, N. Ni, H. D. Drew, and G. S. Jenkins, Optical evidence of the chiral magnetic anomaly in the Weyl semimetal TaAs, Phys. Rev. B 101, 125102 (2020).
  7. M. Behnami, D. V. Efremov, S. Aswartham, G. Shipunov, B. R. Piening, C. G. F. Blum, V. Kocsis, J. Dufouleur, I. Pallecchi, M. Putti, B. Büchner, H. Reichlova, and F. Caglieris, Signature of chiral anomaly in the Weyl semimetal TaRhTe4, Phys. Rev. B 112, 045101 (2025).
  8. I. M. Georgescu, S. Ashhab, and F. Nori, Quantum simulation, Rev. Mod. Phys. 86, 153 (2014).
  9. S. Coleman, More about the massive Schwinger model, Ann. Phys. (NY) 101, 239 (1976).
  10. D. E. Kharzeev and Y. Kikuchi, Real-time chiral dynamics from a digital quantum simulation, Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 023342 (2020).
  11. K. Ikeda, Z.-B. Kang, D. E. Kharzeev, W. Qian, and F. Zhao, Real-time chiral dynamics at finite temperature from quantum simulation, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2024) 031.
  12. I. Bloch, J. Dalibard, and S. Nascimbene, Quantum simulations with ultracold quantum gases, Nat. Phys. 8, 267 (2012).
  13. A. J. Daley, I. Bloch, C. Kokail, S. Flannigan, N. Pearson, M. Troyer, and P. Zoller, Practical quantum advantage in quantum simulation, Nature (London) 607, 667 (2022).
  14. C. Gross and I. Bloch, Quantum simulations with ultracold atoms in optical lattices, Science 357, 995 (2017).
  15. E. Altman, K. R. Brown, G. Carleo, L. D. Carr, E. Demler, C. Chin, B. DeMarco, S. E. Economou, M. A. Eriksson, K.-M. C. Fu, M. Greiner, K. R. A. Hazzard, R. G. Hulet, A. J. Kollar, B. L. Lev, M. D. Lukin, R. Ma, X. Mi, S. Misra, C. Monroe, et al., Quantum simulators: Architectures and opportunities, PRX Quantum 2, 017003 (2021).
  16. X.-G. Huang, Simulating chiral magnetic and separation effects with spin-orbit coupled atomic gases, Sci. Rep. 6, 20601 (2016).
  17. Z. Zheng, Z. Lin, D.-W. Zhang, S.-L. Zhu, and Z. D. Wang, Chiral magnetic effect in three-dimensional optical lattices, Phys. Rev. Res. 1, 033102 (2019).
  18. C. Schweizer, F. Grusdt, M. Berngruber, L. Barbiero, E. Demler, M. Aidelsburger, and I. Bloch, Floquet approach to Z2 lattice gauge theories with ultracold atoms in optical lattices, Nat. Phys. 15, 1168 (2019).
  19. M. Aidelsburger, L. Barbiero, A. Bermudez, T. Chanda, A. Dauphin, D. Gonzalez-Cuadra, P. R. Grzybowski, S. Hands, F. Jendrzejewski, J. Junemann, G. Juzeliunas, V. Kasper, A. Piga, S.-J. Ran, M. Rizzi, G. Sierra, L. Tagliacozzo, E. Tirrito, T. V. Zache, J. Zakrzewski, et al., Cold atoms meet lattice gauge theory, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 380, 20210064 (2022).
  20. M. Dalmonte and S. Montangero, Lattice gauge theory simulations in the quantum information era, Contemp. Phys. 57, 388 (2016).
  21. E. Zohar, J. I. Cirac, and B. Reznik, Quantum simulations of lattice gauge theories using ultracold atoms in optical lattices, Rep. Prog. Phys. 79, 014401 (2016).
  22. T. V. Zache, N. Mueller, J. T. Schneider, F. Jendrzejewski, J. Berges, and P. Hauke, Dynamical topological transitions in the massive Schwinger model with a θ term, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 050403 (2019).
  23. D. E. Kharzeev, Topologically induced local P and CP violation in QCD×QED, Ann. Phys. (NY) 325, 205 (2010).
  24. J. Kogut and L. Susskind, Hamiltonian formulation of Wilson's lattice gauge theories, Phys. Rev. D 11, 395 (1975).
  25. R. Dempsey, I. R. Klebanov, S. S. Pufu, and B. Zan, Discrete chiral symmetry and mass shift in the lattice Hamiltonian approach to the Schwinger model, Phys. Rev. Res. 4, 043133 (2022).
  26. M. J. Rice and E. J. Mele, Elementary excitations of a linearly conjugated diatomic polymer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 1455 (1982).
  27. A. Impertro, S. Karch, J. F. Wienand, S. J. Huh, C. Schweizer, I. Bloch, and M. Aidelsburger, Local readout and control of current and kinetic energy operators in optical lattices, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 063401 (2024).
  28. M. Lohse, C. Schweizer, O. Zilberberg, M. Aidelsburger, and I. Bloch, A Thouless quantum pump with ultracold bosonic atoms in an optical superlattice, Nat. Phys. 12, 350 (2016).
  29. A.-S. Walter, Z. Zhu, M. Gachter, J. Minguzzi, S. Roschinski, K. Sandholzer, K. Viebahn, and T. Esslinger, Quantization and its breakdown in a Hubbard-Thouless pump, Nat. Phys. 19, 1471 (2023).
  30. K. Viebahn, A.-S. Walter, E. Bertok, Z. Zhu, M. Gachter, A. A. Aligia, F. Heidrich-Meisner, and T. Esslinger, Interactions enable Thouless pumping in a nonsliding lattice, Phys. Rev. X 14, 021049 (2024).
  31. J. S. Schwinger, Gauge invariance and mass. II, Phys. Rev. 128, 2425 (1962).
  32. E. A. Martinez, C. A. Muschik, P. Schindler, D. Nigg, A. Erhard, M. Heyl, P. Hauke, M. Dalmonte, T. Monz, P. Zoller, and R. Blatt, Real-time dynamics of lattice gauge theories with a few-qubit quantum computer, Nature (London) 534, 516 (2016).

Outline

Information

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation