Letter
1038/s41586-019-1354-5
Interacting Floquet polaritons
Logan W. Clark1*, Ningyuan Jia1, Nathan Schine1, Claire Baum1, Alexandros Georgakopoulos1 & Jonathan Simon1
Ordinarily, photons do not interact with one another. However,
atoms can be used to mediate photonic interactions1,2, raising the
prospect of forming synthetic materials3 and quantum information
systems4–7 from photons. One promising approach combines highly
excited Rydberg atoms8–12 with the enhanced light–matter coupling
of an optical cavity to convert photons into strongly interacting
polaritons13–15. However, quantum materials made of optical photons
have not yet been realized, because the experimental challenge
of coupling a suitable atomic sample with a degenerate cavity has
constrained cavity polaritons to a single spatial mode that is resonant
with an atomic transition. Here we use Floquet engineering16,17—
the periodic modulation of a quantum system—to enable strongly
interacting polaritons to access multiple spatial modes of an optical
cavity. First, we show that periodically modulating an excited state
of rubidium splits its spectral weight to generate new lines—beyond
those that are ordinarily characteristic of the atom—separated by
multiples of the modulation frequency. Second, we use this capability
to simultaneously generate spectral lines that are resonant with two
chosen spatial modes of a non-degenerate optical cavity, enabling what
we name ‘Floquet polaritons’ to exist in both modes. Because both
spectral lines correspond to the same Floquet-engineered atomic state,
adding a single-frequency field is sufficient to couple both modes to
a Rydberg excitation. We demonstrate that the resulting polaritons
interact strongly in both cavity modes simultaneously. The production
of Floquet polaritons provides a promising new route to the realization
of ordered states of strongly correlated photons, including crystals and
topological fluids, as well as quantum information technologies such
as multimode photon-by-photon switching.
Photons coupled to an atomic ensemble form polaritons, quasipar-
ticles that inherit key properties from both their matter and light com-
ponents18. The atomic component of the polaritons provides them with
the interactions essential for forming non-trivial ordered phases, and
their photonic component enables them to propagate through space.
Adding an optical cavity reshapes the space available for polaritons by
defining a discrete set of modes that can couple to the atomic ensemble.
To enable the study of quantum many-body physics with polaritons3,19,
progress has been made in designing cavity structures to create desir-
able spaces for polariton propagation, including the realization of
synthetic Landau levels for photons20–22. However, the challenges of
engineering these systems have so far resulted in studies of strongly
interacting photons in only a single transverse mode1,14.
One approach for creating multi-mode polaritons is Floquet
engineering—the periodic modulation of parameters to generate
desirable new properties in quantum mechanical systems. Floquet
engineering has proved to be a powerful tool for studying quantum
many-body physics with ultracold atoms, where it has enabled tests of
quantum phase transitions, the creation of new interaction processes
and the development of synthetic gauge fields for studies of topology17
(see Methods and Supplementary Information section B7).
Frequency modulation, the periodic variation of the energy of
a quantum state, is a widespread form of Floquet engineering16.
Periodically modulating a state splits it into multiple bands at different
energies, analogous to frequency modulation in signal processing.
Frequency modulation has enabled faster manipulation23 and efficient
1
James Franck Institute and Department of Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. *e-mail: lwclark@uchicago.edu
https://doi.org/10.
random access architectures24 for superconducting quantum processors
via first-order sideband transitions25. In ultracold atoms, many shaken
lattice experiments16,17 can be modelled as frequency modulations
(see Supplementary Information section B7), and frequency modula-
tion has also been employed to bind diatomic molecules26.
In this work, we frequency-modulate an atomic state to customize the
coupling between atoms and photons, demonstrating that the ‘Floquet
polaritons’ that emerge behave as strongly interacting quasi-particles
with spatial wavefunctions inherited from the chosen modes of the
optical cavity. After loading a gas of cold Rb atoms at the waist of
the cavity, we use an intensity-modulated off-resonance laser to vary the
energy of an excited atomic state sinusoidally. This modulation splits
the state into bands separated by multiples of the modulation frequency.
We choose a frequency that creates bands whose energy difference
matches the separation between two transverse modes of the cavity.
This choice enables photons in both modes to couple to the atomic
ensemble and form polaritons, which we verify by measuring the
transmission spectrum. We also demonstrate that Floquet polaritons
have strong interactions, which in these particular modes hinders
multiple polaritons from entering the cavity simultaneously. We con-
clude by discussing possible uses of Floquet polaritons in many-body
physics and of customized atomic spectra in quantum science more
broadly.
Our experiments begin by controllably loading a sample of 300–1,800
cold 87Rb atoms at the waist of a four-mirror optical cavity (Fig. 1a).
The cavity has modes that are near-detuned to the atomic transition
between the 5S1/2 ground state and the 5P3/2 excited state at 780 nm.
To modulate the energy of the excited state, we expose the atoms to a
multichromatic optical field tuned near the 5P3/2 → 5D5/2 transition at
776 nm. This multichromatic field simultaneously cancels the constant
component of the Stark shift and produces a time-varying component
of the Stark shift that oscillates with tunable frequency f (on a scale
of megahertz to gigahertz) and amplitude η (Fig. 1b). We tune the
modulation amplitude by adjusting the total intensity of the 776-nm
beam; amplitudes are reported in units of the arbitrarily defined
η0 = h × 17(1) MHz, where h is the Planck constant, which corresponds
to a beam intensity of approximately 5 W mm−2, determined by the
polarizability at a detuning of 1 GHz from the 5P3/2 → 5D5/2 transition.
For more details on the experimental setup, see Methods.
Periodic modulation splits the excited state into bands at energies
Ej = E0 + jhf, relative to its unmodulated energy E0, for integers j
(Fig. 1c). For sinusoidal modulation, the collective atom–photon cou-
pling strengths gj at each band should take the form
η 
g j (η , f ) = gJ j   (1)
 hf 
where g is the unmodulated coupling and Jj is the jth Bessel function
of the first kind (see Supplementary Information section B3). We
note that modulation does not create any new states, but instead redis-
tributes the spectral weight of a single state between multiple energies;
this is reflected in the constraint that the total coupling strength
2
g = ∑ j g j (η , f ) is unchanged (see Methods).
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 RESEARCH Letter

a Modulation beam b sufficient modulation, additional avoided crossings become clearly vis-
K ible for the first-order bands at j = ±1 and the second-order bands at

Energy, Ep
0 j = ±2. The frequencies of the observed features deviate slightly from
–K
Ej = E0 + jhf owing to shifts from off-resonance couplings with the
1/f other bands (see Supplementary Information section B4).
Time We extract the coupling strengths gj(η) for each modulation ampli-
tude from the widths of the avoided crossings (Fig. 1e). Although the
c j=2 gj
observed coupling strengths are qualitatively similar to the prediction
j=1 of equation (1), the Bessel functions are distorted by inhomogeneity
f Gc
5P3/2 j=0 of the modulation beam and by slight asymmetry due to higher-order
j = –1 Stark shifts. A theoretical treatment that accounts for these two factors
j = –2 agrees well with the behaviour observed in Fig. 1e (see Supplementary
Modulation amplitude, K Information section A1).
5S1/2
When the atomic transition is split into bands, it can couple res-
Atomic states Cavity onantly to multiple transverse electromagnetic (TEM) modes of the
d K=0 2K0 4K0 cavity simultaneously (Fig. 2a). In our cavity, the fundamental TEM00
mode is conveniently close to the TEM40 mode, which is only 52 MHz
2 away. By modulating the atoms at a frequency near this mode separa-
100
tion, we couple the TEM00 mode with the atoms through the j = 0 band

Probe detuning (MHz)

1
50 and simultaneously couple the TEM40 mode with the atoms through
the j = 1 band. The choice of two nearby modes minimizes the neces-
j
nd
ba

0 sary modulation frequency. We note that each cavity mode couples to

Transmission (%)

50 0
2

a unique collective atomic excitation, in which all of the atoms share

3/
5P

–1 one excitation with relative amplitudes proportional to the electric field

-50
of the mode at each atom’s location. Therefore, the coupling g does not
–2 induce any mixing between different cavity modes (see Supplementary
0 –100 Information section B2).
–100 –50 0 50 100 The next step in providing photons with the strong interactions
Cavity detuning, Gc (MHz) of highly excited Rydberg atoms is to add a 480-nm field to couple
e the 5P3/2 state to a Rydberg state. Because every band is part of the
20 j=2 same 5P3/2 state, this single-frequency field is sufficient to provide the
Atom–cavity coupling, gj (MHz)

15
10
5
0 three types of polaritons27: two bright polariton states Bm± and one
0 1 2 3 4 5
Modulation amplitude, K (K0)
Fig. 1 | Redistributing the spectral density of atoms coupled to a cavity.
a, Photons in a four-mirror optical cavity (red) are strongly coupled to
excitations of a cloud of ultracold atoms (dots). An off-resonance laser
(green) is used to customize the atomic spectrum. b, The laser sinusoidally
modulates the energy Ep of the 5P3/2 atomic state with amplitude η
and frequency f. c, As the modulation amplitude η increases, the 5P3/2
state splits into bands at energies Ej = jhf for integers j. Each band has a
collective coupling strength of g j to the cavity. δc is the cavity detuning.
d, Transmission spectra measured while scanning the cavity length exhibit
avoided crossings, indicative of atom–cavity coupling, for up to five
different bands, depending on the modulation amplitude. The frequencies
of the cavity mode and probe laser are shown as detunings relative to the
unmodulated 5S1/2 → 5P3/2 atomic transition. Transmission is reported
relative to an empty cavity. e, The coupling strengths gj extracted from
the transmission spectra for bands j = 0, ±1, ±2. Error bars are 1σ,
smaller than the symbol heights. Curves show a global fit accounting for
inhomogeneity and slightly asymmetric modulation (see Supplementary
Information section A1).
To test for the redistribution of the excited state into bands, we
measure the transmission spectrum of a single mode of the cavity
while scanning the cavity length (Fig. 1d). Whenever the energy of the
mode approaches the energy of an atomic band, we observe an avoided
crossing in the spectrum. Without modulation, only a single avoided
crossing is observed, corresponding to the original band j = 0. With
j=1
Rydberg coupling. For instance, a cavity mode can couple to a 5P3/2
j=0
j = –1 excitation through the j = 1 band, and that 5P3/2 excitation can then
j = –2 still be coupled to a Rydberg excitation via a different band, such as
j = 0. In this work, we use the single-frequency field tuned to create
Rydberg coupling via the j = 0 band regardless of the bands used for
atom–cavity coupling.
The eigenstates of the atom–cavity system are superpositions of col-
lective modulated atomic excitations with cavity photons, which we
name Floquet polaritons (Fig. 2b). Each cavity mode TEMm0 yields
6
dark polariton state Dm. The bright polaritons are primarily com-
posed of a photon in the corresponding cavity mode and a collective
5P3/2 excitation; their 5P3/2 components, with a high decay rate of
Γ = 2π × 6 MHz, make them short-lived. We are primarily interested
in the dark polaritons, which are superpositions of a cavity photon with
a collective Rydberg excitation. Dark polaritons are useful for studying
quantum many-body physics because they are long-lived and strongly
interacting, as long as the Rydberg blockade radius—the distance over
which one Rydberg atom prevents a second one from being excited—is
about the same as the mode size of the cavity14.
To detect dark polaritons we measure the transmission spectrum of
the atom–cavity system for a fixed cavity length (Fig. 2c). We choose
a length for which the TEM00 mode is resonant with the j = 0 band
and the TEM40 mode is resonant with the j = 1 band. Without mod-
ulation (η = 0), we observe the predicted polariton features in the
TEM00 mode, including two bright polaritons widely split as a result
of strong light–matter coupling, as well as a dark polariton at a fre-
quency between them. The bright polaritons are broad owing to the
rapid decay of the 5P3/2 component, but the dark polariton’s low decay
rate Γd = 2π × 0.3 MHz makes its transmission feature much narrower.
However, without modulation, there is no coupling through the j = 1
band (g1 = 0) and the atoms do not resonantly couple to the TEM40
mode; we therefore observe a transmission feature in that mode that is
equivalent to an empty cavity.
Increasing the modulation amplitude couples the atoms with the
TEM40 mode by increasing the sideband strength, g1, at the expense

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a b
Rydberg
B4+
D4
Ω D4
Γ g1 B4–
g0 TEM40
5P3/2 TEM00
B0+
D0
B0–
5S1/2
Atomic Cavity Polaritons
states modes
Fig. 2 | Forming Floquet polaritons in a customized space. a, To form
Rydberg polaritons we add a field at 480 nm to couple the 5P3/2 state to a
Rydberg state with coupling strength Ω. When the modulation frequency
f matches the energy spacing between the TEM00 and TEM40 cavity modes,
photons in both modes are resonantly coupled to excitations of the atoms
with strengths determined by the resonant bands. b, The eigenstates of
this atom–cavity system are sets of three polaritons in each spatial mode
TEMm0, consisting of two bright polaritons Bm± composed primarily of
a cavity photon and a collective 5P3/2 excitation, and one dark polariton
Dm composed of a cavity photon and a collective Rydberg excitation.
The bright polaritons are broad owing to the rapid decay of their 5P3/2
component at a rate of Γ = 2π × 6 MHz. Colours represent the relative
contributions to each eigenstate from the corresponding bare states
of the original feature strength, g0. When this mode couples to the
atoms, the original TEM40 feature is divided into the three polaritons
B4± and D4, and the separation between the B0± bright polaritons is
narrowed owing to the weaker light–matter coupling in that mode.
Although the primary features come from the 5P3/2 bands that are res-
onantly coupled to each cavity mode, the other bands also couple to
the cavity modes off-resonantly, inducing small shifts of the polariton
energies. These off-resonance couplings cause the observed asymmetry
between the Bm+ and Bm− features (see Supplementary Information
section B4). Moreover, although their spectroscopic features remain
separated, a treatment using Floquet theory reveals that the two dark
polariton modes are governed by an effective Hamiltonian in which
the modes are nearly degenerate, with their relative energies controlled
by the modulation frequency (see Supplementary Information section
B5). This effect cannot be achieved by the frequency modulation of the
Rydberg coupling field, which would enable additional modes to host
dark polaritons satisfying two-photon resonance, but which would also
have an unacceptably large mismatch between the cavity photons and
the 5S1/2 → 5P3/2 transition. A mismatch effectively reduces the optical
density of the atomic sample, making the dark polaritons very fragile,
for example, having a reduced lifetime (see Supplementary Information
section A3).
We next test for interactions between the Floquet dark polari-
tons (Fig. 3a). Here we couple to the 100S1/2 Rydberg state, which is
expected to make the polaritons interact strongly because its blockade
radius of 25 μm is larger than the cavity mode waist of 12 μm
(see Methods)14. With sufficient modulation to support dark polar-
itons in both modes, we probe the cavity at the D4 feature in the
forward direction and simultaneously probe the D 0 feature in
the backward direction. We then monitor the photons leaking out of
the cavity in each mode, and test for photonic interactions via the cor-
relation function Gmn(τ) between photons from TEMm0 and photons
from TEMn0, separated by a time τ (see Supplementary Information
section A2). In this system, correlations arise exclusively from strong
interactions between individual polaritons, as a result of the Rydberg
components of the polaritons14.
Photon antibunching—the suppression of photon coincidence
events relative to an uncorrelated field—reveals strong interactions
between the Floquet polaritons (Fig. 3b–d). Antibunching appears as
a minimum in the correlation functions Gmn at zero time delay (τ = 0),
where the correlation can be interpreted as the likelihood that a second
Letter RESEARCH
c
TEM00 TEM40
50
Transmission (%)
40
30
20
D0
10
0 B4+
0
Mo B0– B0+ B4–
am 2
pli dulat 60 80
tud ion 4 20 40
e, –20 0
K( Probe frequency (MHz)
K)
0
depicted in a; light and dark blue, TEM00 and TEM40, respectively; green,
5P3/2 state; red, Rydberg state. c, With the cavity length fixed, we probe
the transmission spectrum of the combined atom–cavity system. To avoid
blockade effects, we use the weakly interacting 39S1/2 Rydberg level, with
a small blockade radius of 4 μm compared to the 12-μm cavity waist. The
probe laser is in an equal superposition of the TEM00 and TEM40 modes,
and we simultaneously monitor the photons that are output from both
modes on a single detector. Without modulation (η = 0), we observe
the predicted polariton features in TEM00, but TEM40 exhibits only an
ordinary cavity transmission line. With sufficient modulation, we detect
all six of the polariton features predicted in b. Additional frequency shifts
and asymmetries in the polariton spectra result from couplings to off-
resonance bands (see Supplementary Information section B4).
photon is present, compared to the non-interacting case. A substan-
tial suppression indicates that the presence of just one dark polar-
iton in any mode of the cavity impedes the entry of a second dark
polariton. More specifically, the magnitude of the correlation minima
G(0)/G(∞) = γ2/(U2 + γ2) reveals the strength of the interactions U
relative to the polariton lifetime γ; suppression of the zero-time cor-
relation by half indicates an interaction strength equal to the polariton
lifetime. The polariton lifetime also determines the correlation time
over which multiple photon events are suppressed (see Supplementary
Information section A2). By contrast, perfect coherent light without
interactions, such as a laser beam, exhibits a flat correlation function
G(τ) = 1. Classical fluctuations, such as intensity instability, cause the
correlation function to rise above 1. In our system, the background
correlation values result primarily from trial-to-trial fluctuations in
the number of atoms.
Future applications of this system to quantum information, such as
in multimode photon-by-photon switching, would benefit from the use
of Floquet polaritons with lifetimes and interaction strengths compa-
rable to polaritons optimized for blockade in a single mode (Fig. 3e).
Simulations using non-Hermitian perturbation theory indicate that
the observed difference in performance between these two cases
results from surmountable technical limitations (see Supplementary
Information section A2). In particular, modulation splits the atom–
cavity coupling g and the Rydberg coupling Ω between multiple bands,
weakening the resonant light–matter coupling for any particular mode.
Upgrading the system to achieve the atomic densities typical of free-
space experiments8 would increase g by an order of magnitude, and the
use of a buildup cavity for the Rydberg coupling beam would similarly
enhance Ω. These modifications would enable the multimode perfor-
mance (with frequency modulation) to reach or surpass the perfor-
mance shown in Fig. 3e.
We have realized and characterized interacting Floquet polaritons.
These polaritons exist in a completely customizable space in which
their modes and energetic structure (see Supplementary Information
section B5) are controlled by the frequency modulation of an atomic
gas in an optical cavity. Floquet polaritons can be used to study many-
body physics with features that have not yet been realized in any other
platform, including physics in multiply connected ‘polariton worm-
holes’ and the non-Abelian topological phases of multilayer fractional
quantum Hall systems (see Supplementary Information section B6).
The customizable structures are also rapidly tunable via adjustments to
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 RESEARCH Letter
a b
Autocorrelation G00
Probe D4 Modulation beam Probe D0
forward backward
c e
Autocorrelation G44
TEM00 single-photon TEM40 single-photon
counters counters
Fig. 3 | Strong interactions between Floquet dark polaritons. a, We use
the highly excited 100S1/2 Rydberg state to make dark polaritons interact
strongly with each other, so that the presence of a single polariton in the
cavity hinders the entry of others. To test for this blockade effect, we probe
the atom–cavity system simultaneously with one laser propagating in the
forward direction tuned to the dark polariton D4 resonance and a second
laser propagating in the backward direction tuned to the D0 resonance.
Single-photon counters monitor the cavity emission in each mode.
b–e, The autocorrelation functions for the TEM00 (G00; b) and TEM40
(G44; c) modes with frequency modulation η = 2.7η0 show that photons in
the modulation, raising the prospect of inducing and studying polari-
ton dynamics28–30. Thus, Floquet polaritons are suitable for studying
strongly correlated materials made of photons, including crystals and
Laughlin states29–32 as well as for quantum information science12,24.
More broadly, the Floquet engineering scheme presented here has a
variety of other prospective applications, for example, in matching
atomic spectra with the spectra of other physical systems for quan-
tum information applications7 or in tuning spectra to enable new
laser-cooling schemes33.
Online content
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data, statements of data availability and associated accession codes are available at
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1354-5.
Received: 27 June 2018; Accepted: 30 April 2019;
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d 1.7
1.7
Cross-correlation G40
1.3 1.3
0.9 0.9
0.5 0.5
1.7 1.5
Unmodulated G00
1.3 1.0
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–6 –3 0 3 6 –6 –3 0 3 6
Time delay, W (μs) Time delay, W (μs)
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in different modes lead to cross-blockade, shown by the cross-correlation
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Acknowledgements We thank L. Feng for comments on the manuscript. This
work was supported by DOE grant DE-SC0010267 for apparatus construction,
AFOSR grant FA9550-18-1-0317 for modelling and MURI grant FA9550-16-
1-0323 for data collection and analysis. N.S. acknowledges support from a
University of Chicago Grainger graduate fellowship and C.B. acknowledges
support from the NSF GRFP.
Reviewer information Nature thanks Oliver Morsch, Michael Sentef and the other
anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Author contributions The experiment was designed and built by all authors.
L.W.C., N.J. and N.S. collected the data. L.W.C. and N.J. analysed the data. L.W.C.
and J.S. developed the theory. L.W.C. prepared the manuscript, and all authors
contributed to the final manuscript.
Letter RESEARCH
Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Extended data is available for this paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-
019-1354-5.
Supplementary information is available for this paper at https://doi.org/
10.1038/s41586-019-1354-5.
Reprints and permissions information is available at http://www.nature.com/
reprints.
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to L.W.C.
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 RESEARCH Letter
Methods
Experimental setup. The experimental apparatus used for this work is described
in the supplementary information of ref. 14. We controllably transport a sample of
300–1,800 87Rb atoms into the region spanned by the TEM40 mode of an optical
cavity, corresponding to total atom–cavity coupling strengths of g = 8–19 MHz at
the |5S1/2, F = 2〉 → |5P3/2, F′ = 3〉 atomic transition for each cavity mode, where F
and F′ label the ground and excited hyperfine manifolds, respectively. A blue laser
beam near 480 nm couples the 5P3/2 → nS1/2 transition for the Rydberg principal
quantum number n. A diagram of the atomic levels and transitions relevant to this
work is shown in Extended Data Fig. 1a.
As in our previous work, the atomic sample is ‘sliced’ to a root-mean-square
length of approximately 10 μm, which is sufficiently small for one 100S1/2 Rydberg
excitation to blockade the formation of further Rydberg excitations. In particular,
because we are only weakly driving the cavity, the Rydberg blockade radius7 is
1 /6
C 
RB =  6  (2)
 γ 
R modulation laser beam intensity profile, nor do they fluctuate over time owing to
where the effective Rydberg–Rydberg interaction potential V(R) = C6/R6 becomes
equal to the Rydberg decay rate γR ≈ h × 200 kHz. For the 39S Rydberg state, the
coefficient C639 = h × 730 MHz μm6 corresponds to a radius of just RB39 = 4 μm ,
whereas the much more strongly interacting 100S Rydberg state has coefficient
C6100 = h × 56 GHz μm6 for a blockade radius of RB100 = 25 μm. This difference in
blockade radius corresponds to a blockade volume that is 240 times smaller for the
weakly interacting state.
The cavity used in this work is the same as that described previously14. The
cavity is non-degenerate, with a free spectral range of 2,204.6 MHz and a transverse
mode spacing along the vertical axis of 564.05 MHz. As a result, there is a TEM40
mode (4 × 564.05 MHz) – 2,204.6 MHz = 51.6 MHz higher than the fundamental
TEM00 mode. Each cavity transverse mode contains a pair of orthogonal polariza-
tion modes that are nearly linear; however, throughout this work we use only the
modes that are approximately horizontally polarized.
The enormous static electric polarizability of the 100S Rydberg state,
α ∝ 6 GHz cm2 V−2, makes it very easy for small electric field drifts or inhomoge-
neities to decohere the collective Rydberg states. A detailed theoretical treatment of
this effect in the context of our system can be found in a previous study15. We have
taken care to design our cavity and its mounting structure to keep all surfaces as far
away from the atoms as possible (the closest surface is 12 mm away), so that any
patch potentials or dipoles that build up from Rb adsorbates have minimal effect
on the atoms. Moreover, we use active electric field control with eight intracavity
electrodes in order to zero the electric field at the location of the atoms, maximizing
the Rydberg coherence time. Our effective Rydberg decay rate, γR ≈ h × 200 kHz
at 100S, is not at present limited by the background electric field. For more detail
on our experimental efforts to control the electric field, see supplement D of our
previous work14.
We have reshaped the transverse beam profile to ensure that the blue beam,
which propagates approximately along the cavity mode axis, covers the atomic
sample nearly homogeneously while still achieving sufficiently strong Rydberg
coupling. The blue beam then has an elliptical intensity profile with a vertical waist
of 64 μm and a horizontal waist of 20 μm; both which exceed the corresponding
vertical (42 μm) and horizontal (12 μm) widths of the TEM40 mode.
Frequency modulation setup. Floquet engineering with ultracold atoms has
enabled tests of quantum phase transitions34–36, the creation of new interaction
processes37–39 and the development of synthetic gauge fields40–45 for studies of
topology46–49. The frequency modulation setup that we use in this work is directly
analogous to the photon-assisted tunnelling used in many of these experiments
with ultracold atoms17 (see Supplementary Information section B7).
The goal of our frequency modulation setup is to vary the energy Ep of the
5P3/2 state sinusoidally. We achieve this goal using a multichromatic field near
the 5P3/2 → 5D5/2 transition at 776 nm (Extended Data Fig. 1b). The field con-
tains red-detuned and blue-detuned components (lower and higher frequency
than resonance, respectively), each approximately 1 GHz away from resonance
on opposite sides of the transition, such that there is no average Stark shift of the
5P3/2 state. Then, we intensity-modulate the blue-detuned component to cause the
energy of the 5P3/2 state to oscillate around zero with controllable frequency f and
amplitude η. We tune the modulation amplitude by adjusting the total intensity
of the 776-nm laser.
To generate the multichromatic field, we begin with a single frequency source
with a total power of 20 mW that is red-detuned from the transition and locked at
a detuning δ = −∆ (where ∆ = 1 GHz), relative to the resonance frequency. We
then generate the blue-detuned component using a fibre electro-optic modulator,
driven with two radio-frequency tones at 2∆ and 2∆ + f. This modulation gener-
ates a variety of sidebands, most of which are further detuned from the resonance
than the original beam. The sidebands that eventually produce the greatest shifts
of the 5P3/2 state are the blue-detuned bands at δ = ∆ and δ = ∆ + f, which have
similar detuning to the original beam and are first order in the power of the radio
frequency. These two frequency components are equivalent to a single component
at δ = ∆ + f/2 that is intensity-modulated at f. Therefore, our setup can be under-
stood in essence as producing a red-detuned component with constant intensity
and a blue-detuned component with modulated intensity. Finally, to enable large
shifts of the 5P3/2 state, the entire modulated beam is sent through a tapered ampli-
fier to achieve a maximum power of about 1 W before illuminating the atomic
sample. We experimentally adjust the exact detunings and power of the radio fre-
quency in order to achieve the largest possible 5P3/2 modulation for a given total
laser power, as well as ensuring that the average Stark shift of the 5P3/2 state is zero.
We have designed our setup to avoid a few detrimental side effects of frequency
modulation. First, we have attempted to make the average Stark shift of the 5P3/2
state as small as possible, such that the j = 0 band always remains at the same
energy as the unmodulated 5P3/2 state. This choice is important because it ensures
that the 5P3/2 band frequencies do not vary spatially owing to inhomogeneity in the
total intensity instability. Moreover, cancelling the average Stark shift also ensures
that we do not have to tune the cavity length to match a new j = 0 band frequency
each time we adjust the modulation amplitude. We note that, in this setup, the
largest remaining source of temporal drift in the average Stark shift of the 5P3/2
state seems to come from the tapered amplifier, in which the relative amplification
of the various electro-optic modulator sidebands exhibits very small fluctuations
owing to temperature instability. We suspect that this comes from a weak etalon
effect in the amplifier chip; we observe that the 5P3/2 energy oscillates as we steadily
increase the amplifier temperature. We believe that we have somewhat mitigated
this effect by choosing an amplifier temperature that is at an extremum of the
oscillation, making the system quadratically insensitive to temperature fluctuation
around the extremum.
A second detrimental side effect comes from the off-resonance shift of the
5S1/2 state. The multichromatic field is detuned by only 4 nm from the strong
5S1/2 → 5P3/2 transition at 780 nm. In principle, this shift could be cancelled as
well, for example, by using a copropagating beam at approximately 784 nm, but
cancellation was not practical in this case. We instead minimized the inhomoge-
neity of this shift—which would otherwise cause broadening of the dark polariton
lines—by ensuring that the beam was large (approximately round with a waist
of 70 μm) compared to the horizontal cavity mode waist of 12 μm. Moreover,
the 776-nm beam propagates along the vertical axis (the long axis of the TEM40
mode), ensuring that along that axis its intensity is approximately homogeneous
across the sample without needing to increase the waist size. With sufficiently small
inhomogeneity, we are able to slightly adjust the cavity length to account for the net
shift of the 5S1/2 state without any deterioration of the performance of our system.
In the future, we intend to upgrade our apparatus to use a modulation field near
the 5P3/2 → 4D5/2 transition at 1,529 nm instead of the existing 776-nm field. This
substitution would have three key advantages. First, the 5P3/2 → 4D5/2 transition
is stronger than that of 5P3/2 → 5D5/2; switching transitions makes the energy
modulation approximately 40 times larger for similar beam intensity. Second, the
new detuning from the 5S1/2 → 5P3/2 transition would be nearly 100 times greater,
dramatically reducing the off-resonance shift of the 5S1/2 state. Finally, fibre elec-
tro-optic modulators operating at 1,529 nm can operate with much higher total
powers, even exceeding 1 W, enabling us to modulate the beam after it is amplified,
and thus prevent the amplifier from causing instability in the intensity ratios of the
various frequency components in the field.
Throughout the text, we report modulation amplitudes in units of the arbi-
trarily defined η0, which is defined as the peak energy Ep of the 5P3/2 state in each
modulation cycle for a total 776-nm beam intensity of approximately 5 W mm−2.
From the fit result of Fig. 1e, detailed in Supplementary Information section A1,
we estimate that η0 = h × 17(1) MHz.
Finally, we note that the three sets of experiments reported in this work each
use a slightly different modulation frequency. In Fig. 1 we use a frequency of
f = 53 MHz, for Fig. 2 f = 58 MHz, and for Fig. 3 f = 54 MHz. Each of these fre-
quencies is close to the bare cavity mode spacing of 52 MHz between the TEM00
and TEM40 modes, but differs slightly to compensate for the shifts which come
from coupling to off-resonance bands (see Supplementary Information section B4).
Data availability
The experimental data presented in this manuscript is available from the corre-
sponding author upon request.
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 RESEARCH Letter
Extended Data Fig. 1 | Atomic level diagram. a, Three key electronic
transitions of 87Rb atoms enable the formation of Floquet polaritons. First,
cavity photons near 780 nm couple to the 5S1/2 → 5P3/2 atomic transition.
Second, a beam near 480 nm drives the 5P3/2 → nS1/2 transition to the
Rydberg level with principal quantum number n at coupling strength Ω.
Third, a multichromatic field near the 5P3/2 → 5D5/2 transition modulates
the energy of the 5P3/2 state. b, The multichromatic field has two
components with approximately opposite detunings ±δ: a red-detuned
component with constant intensity Ir, and a blue-detuned component with
sinusoidally modulated intensity Ib[1 + cos(ωt)], where ω = 2πf.