Engineering synthetic gauge fields through the coupling phases in cavity magnonics

Cavity magnonics, which studies the interaction of light with magnetic systems in a cavity, is a promising platform for quantum transducers and quantum memories. At microwave frequencies, the coupling between a cavity photon and a magnon, the quasiparticle of a spin-wave excitation, is a consequence of the Zeeman interaction between the cavity's magnetic field and the magnet's macroscopic spin. For each photon-magnon interaction, a coupling phase factor exists, and this is often neglected in simple systems; however, in "loop-coupled"systems, where there are at least as many couplings as modes, the coupling phases become relevant for the physics and lead to synthetic gauge fields. We present experimental evidence of the existence of such coupling phases by considering two spheres made of yttrium-iron-garnet and two different re-entrant cavities. We predict numerically the values of the coupling phases, and we find good agreement between the theory and the experimental data. These results show that in cavity magnonics, one can engineer synthetic gauge fields, which can be useful for cavity-mediated coupling and engineering dark-mode physics.