Simon Ohler, Maximilian Kiefer-Emmanouilidis, Antoine Browaeys, Hans Peter Büchler, Michael Fleischhauer

• As shown in recent experiments (Lienhard et al 2020 Phys. Rev. X 10 021031), spin–orbit coupling in systems of Rydberg atoms can give rise to density-dependent Peierls phases in second-order hoppings of Rydberg spin excitations and nearest-neighbor repulsion. We here study theoretically a one-dimensional zig-zag ladder system of such spin–orbit coupled Rydberg atoms at half filling. The second-order hopping is shown to be associated with an effective gauge field, which in mean-field approximation is static and homogeneous. Beyond the mean-field level the gauge potential attains a transverse quantum component whose amplitude is dynamical and linked to density modulations. We here study the effects of this to the possible ground-state phases of the system. In a phase where strong repulsion leads to a density wave, we find that as a consequence of the induced quantum gauge field a regular pattern of current vortices is formed. However also in the absence of density–density interactions the quantum gauge field attains a non-vanishing amplitude. Above a certain critical strength of the second-order hopping the energy gain due to gauge-field induced transport overcomes the energy cost from the associated build-up of density modulations leading to a spontaneous generation of the quantum gauge field.