  The vibrations of a collection of ions in a microtrap array can be described
in terms of hopping phonons. We show theoretically that the vibrational
couplings may be tailored by using a gradient of the microtrap frequencies,
together with a periodic driving of the trapping potential. These ingredients
allow us to induce effective gauge fields on the vibrational excitations, such
that phonons mimic the behavior of charged particles in a magnetic field. In
particular, microtrap arrays are ideally suited to realize the famous
Aharonov-Bohm effect, and observe the paradigmatic edge states typical from
quantum-Hall samples and topological insulators.
