An Effective Heisenberg Spin Chain in a Fiber-Cavity System

We propose a scheme to realize the Heisenberg spin chain in a one-dimensional array of cavities connected by optical fibers. The proposed scheme is based on the off-resonant Raman transitions between two ground states of atoms, and is induced by the cavity modes and external fields. Under the interactions between the nearest neighbors (NNs) and the next NNs, the result shows that the atoms, via the exchange of virtual photons, can be effectively equal to a spin-1/2 Heisenberg model under certain conditions. The parameters of the effective Hamiltonian can be controlled by tuning the laser fields.