Liquid Ground State, Gap, and Excited States of a Strongly Correlated Spin Chain

We present an exact solution of an experimentally realizable and strongly interacting one-dimensional spin system which is a limiting case of a quantum Ising model with long range interaction in a transverse and longitudinal field. Pronounced quantum fluctuations lead to a strongly correlated liquid ground state. For open boundary conditions the ground state manifold consists of four degenerate sectors whose quantum numbers are determined by the orientation of the edge spins. Explicit expressions for the entanglement properties, the exact excitation gap, as well as the exact wave functions for a couple of excited states are analytically derived and discussed. We outline how this system can be experimentally realized in a lattice gas of Rydberg atoms.