Engineering topological many-body materials in microwave cavity arrays

Abstract

We present a scalable architecture for the exploration of interacting topological phases of photons in arrays of microwave cavities, using established techniques from cavity and circuit quantum electrodynamics. A time-reversal symmetry-breaking (nonreciprocal) flux is induced by coupling the microwave cavities to ferrites, allowing for the production of a variety of topological band structures including the α =1/4 Hofstadter model. To induce photon-photon interactions, the cavities are coupled to superconducting qubits; we find these interactions are sufficient to stabilize v =1/2 bosonic Laughlin puddle. Exact diagonalization studies demonstrate that this architecture is robust to experimentally achievable levels of disorder. These advances provide an exciting opportunity to employ the quantum circuit toolkit for the exploration of strongly interacting topological materials.