Synthetic Hall ladder with tunable magnetic flux

Abstract: We describe a synthetic three-leg Hall ladder system with a tunable magnetic flux for neutral $^{173}$Yb atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice. The ladder legs are formed by three hyperfine ground spin states of the atoms, and the complex interleg links are generated through Raman couplings between the spin states using multiple laser beams. The effective magnetic flux through a ladder plaquette, $\phi$, is controlled by the angles of the Raman laser beams with the lattice axis. We investigate the quench dynamics of the Hall ladder system for $\phi\approx\frac{\pi}{3}, \frac{\pi}{2},$ and $\frac{2\pi}{3}$ after a sudden application of the Raman coupling in various interleg link configurations. The semi-classical trajectory of the atoms in the plane of the spin composition and lattice position exhibits the characteristic motion for the effective magnetic field. In a tube configuration with the three legs cyclically linked, the quench evolution was observed to be substantially damped, which is attributed to the random flux threading the Hall tube.