Floquet Flux Attachment in Cold Atomic Systems

Flux attachment provides a powerful conceptual framework for understanding certain forms of topological order, including most notably the fractional quantum Hall effect. Despite its ubiquitous use as a theoretical tool, directly realizing flux attachment in a microscopic setting remains an open challenge. Here, we propose a simple approach to realizing flux attachment in a periodically-driven (Floquet) system of either spins or hard-core bosons. We demonstrate that such a system naturally realizes correlated hopping interactions and provides a sharp connection between such interactions and flux attachment. Starting with a simple, nearest-neighbor, free boson model, we find evidence – from both a coupled wire analysis and large-scale density matrix renormalization group simulations – that Floquet flux attachment stabilizes the bosonic integer quantum Hall state at 1/4 filling (on a square lattice), and the Halperin-221 fractional quantum Hall state at 1/6 filling (on a honeycomb lattice). At 1/2 filling on the square lattice, time-reversal symmetry is instead spontaneously broken and bosonic integer quantum Hall states with opposite Hall conductances are degenerate. Finally, we propose an optical-lattice-based implementation of our model on a square lattice and discuss prospects for adiabatic preparation as well as effects of Floquet heating.