A Bose-Einstein Condensate on a Synthetic Hall Cylinder

Interplay between matter and fields in physical spaces with nontrivial geometries gives rise to many exotic quantum phenomena. However, their realizations are often impeded by experimental constraints. Here, we realize a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) on a synthetic cylindrical surface subject to a net radial synthetic magnetic flux, topologically equivalent to a two-dimensional (2D) Hall ribbon with two edges connected. This cylindrical surface comprises a real spatial dimension and a curved synthetic dimension formed by cyclically-coupled spin states. The BEC on such a Hall cylinder has counterintuitive properties unattainable by its counterparts in 2D planes. We observe Bloch oscillations of the BEC with doubled periodicity of the band structure, analogous to traveling on a Möbius strip, reflecting the BEC's emergent crystalline order with nonsymmorphic symmetry-protected band crossings. We further demonstrate such topological operations as gapping the band crossings and unzipping the cylinder. Our work opens the door to engineering synthetic curved spaces and observing intriguing quantum phenomena inherent to the topology of spaces.