Realization of an Extremely Anisotropic Heisenberg Magnet in Rydberg Atom Arrays

Strong mutual interaction which correlates elementary excitations of quantum matter plays a key role in a range of emergent phenomena, from binding and condensation to quantum thermalization and many-body localization. Here, we employ a Rydberg quantum simulator to experimentally demonstrate strongly correlated spin transport in anisotropic Heisenberg magnets, where the magnon-magnon interaction can be tuned 2 orders of magnitude larger than the magnon hopping strength. In our approach, the motion of magnons is controlled by an induced spin-exchange interaction through far off-resonant driving, which enables coherent transport of a single Rydberg excitation across a chain of ground-state atoms. As the most prominent signature of a giant anisotropy, we show that nearby Rydberg excitations form distinct types of magnon-bound states, where a tightly bound pair exhibits frozen dynamics in a fragmented Hilbert space, while a loosely bound pair propagates and establishes correlations beyond a single lattice site. Our scheme complements studies using resonant dipole-dipole interactions between Rydberg states and opens the door to exploring quantum thermodynamics with ultrastrong interactions and kinetic constraints. Published by the American Physical Society 2024