Synthetic photonic lattices based on three-level giant-atom arrays.

Simulating photonic lattices remains to be an interesting and important goal for quantum technologies. Here, we propose several simulation schemes of one- and quasi-one-dimensional photonic lattices based on arrays of diverse three-level giant-atom dimers. The resulting models, including diamond, Su-Schrieffer-Heeger, and ladder lattices, exhibit protected nearest-neighbor and greatly inhibited next-nearest-neighbor interactions, which are challenging with most state-of-the-art experimental platforms. Our proposals based on circuit quantum electrodynamics are tunable, scalable, and reconfigurable, thus providing opportunities for simulating more advanced photonic lattices and exploring unprecedented phenomena with no counterparts in conventional condensed matter physics.