Synthetic Landau levels and robust chiral edge states for dark-state polaritons in a static and scalable continuum media

Abstract

We demonstrate the generation and dynamical control of synthetic Landau levels and robust chiral edge states for neutral dark-state polaritons using electromagnetically induced transparency in our theoretical studies. We adopt an optical approach to produce synthetic magnetic fields for dark-state polaritons in the static laboratory frame. In our scalable system, an Aharonov-Bohm phase is obtained along a closed loop in a continuous material rather than a sophisticated lattice structure. Our scheme paves the way toward versatile quantum simulators, dynamically controllable photonic circuits, and generators for exotic states of light carrying topological winding numbers.