Engineering Ising-XY spin models in a triangular lattice via tunable artificial gauge fields

Understand

Emulation of gauge fields for ultracold atoms provides access to a class of exotic states arising in strong magnetic fields.

• Here we report on the experimental realisation of tunable staggered gauge fields in a periodically driven triangular lattice.
• For maximal staggered magnetic fluxes, the doubly degenerate superfluid ground state breaks both a discrete Z2 (Ising) symmetry and a continuous U(1) symmetry.
• By measuring an Ising order parameter, we observe a thermally driven phase transition from an ordered antiferromagnetic to an unordered paramagnetic state and textbook-like magnetisation curves.