Meissner effect in Fock space

Abstract

By periodically driving a single bosonic Josephson junction (BJJ) with an impurity, a synthetic gauge field is generated in the Fock space of the system. At a critical synthetic gauge flux the ground state undergoes a quantum phase transition which is analogous to the Meissner-Abrikosov-vortex transition found in type-II superconductors with an applied magnetic field. A second quantum phase transition involving attractive interactions between the bosons of the BJJ is shown to enhance the sensitivity of the system to the Meissner-Abrikosov-vortex transition.