No Arabic abstract
A quasi-resonant laser induces a long-range attractive force within a cloud of cold atoms. We take advantage of this force to build in the laboratory a system of particles with a one-dimensional gravitational-like interaction, at a fluid level of modeling. We give experimental evidences of such an interaction in a cold Strontium gas, studying the density profile of the cloud, its size as a function of the number of atoms, and its breathing oscillations.
In two dimensions, a system of self-gravitating particles collapses and forms a singularity in finite time below a critical temperature $T_c$. We investigate experimentally a quasi two-dimensional cloud of cold neutral atoms in interaction with two pairs of perpendicular counter-propagating quasi-resonant laser beams, in order to look for a signature of this ideal phase transition: indeed, the radiation pressure forces exerted by the laser beams can be viewed as an anisotropic, and non-potential, generalization of two-dimensional self-gravity. We first show that our experiment operates in a parameter range which should be suitable to observe the collapse transition. However, the experiment unveils only a moderate compression instead of a phase transition between the two phases. A three-dimensional numerical simulation shows that both the finite small thickness of the cloud, which induces a competition between the effective gravity force and the repulsive force due to multiple scattering, and the atomic losses due to heating in the third dimension, contribute to smearing the transition.
The approach to equilibrium is studied for long-range quantum Ising models where the interaction strength decays like r^{-alpha} at large distances r with an exponent $alpha$ not exceeding the lattice dimension. For a large class of observables and initial states, the time evolution of expectation values can be calculated. We prove analytically that, at a given instant of time t and for sufficiently large system size N, the expectation value of some observable <A>(t) will practically be unchanged from its initial value <A>(0). This finding implies that, for large enough N, equilibration effectively occurs on a time scale beyond the experimentally accessible one and will not be observed in practice.
The non-equilibrium response of a quantum many-body system defines its fundamental transport properties and how initially localized quantum information spreads. However, for long-range-interacting quantum systems little is known. We address this issue by analyzing a local quantum quench in the long-range Ising model in a transverse field, where interactions decay as a variable power-law with distance $propto r^{-alpha}$, $alpha>0$. Using complementary numerical and analytical techniques, we identify three dynamical regimes: short-range-like with an emerging light cone for $alpha>2$; weakly long-range for $1<alpha<2$ without a clear light cone but with a finite propagation speed of almost all excitations; and fully non-local for $alpha<1$ with instantaneous transmission of correlations. This last regime breaks generalized Lieb--Robinson bounds and thus locality. Numerical calculation of the entanglement spectrum demonstrates that the usual picture of propagating quasi-particles remains valid, allowing an intuitive interpretation of our findings via divergences of quasi-particle velocities. Our results may be tested in state-of-the-art trapped-ion experiments.
We analyze the temporal response of the fluorescence light that is emitted from a dense gas of cold atoms driven by a laser. When the average interatomic distance is smaller than the wavelength of the photons scattered by the atoms, the system exhibits strong dipolar interactions and collective dissipation. We solve the exact dynamics of small systems with different geometries and show how these collective features are manifest in the scattered light properties such as the photon emission rate, the power spectrum and the second-order correlation function. By calculating these quantities beyond the weak driving limit, we make progress in understanding the signatures of collective behavior in these many-body systems. Furthermore, we clarify the role of disorder on the resonance fluorescence, of direct relevance for recent experimental efforts that aim at the exploration of many-body effects in dipole-dipole interacting gases of atoms.
Spin ensembles coupled to optical cavities provide a powerful platform for engineering synthetic quantum matter. Recently, we demonstrated that cavity mediated infinite range interactions can induce fast scrambling in a Heisenberg $XXZ$ spin chain (Phys. Rev. Research {bf 2}, 043399 (2020)). In this work, we analyze the kaleidoscope of quantum phases that emerge in this system from the interplay of these interactions. Employing both analytical spin-wave theory as well as numerical DMRG calculations, we find that there is a large parameter regime where the continuous $U(1)$ symmetry of this model is spontaneously broken and the ground state of the system exhibits $XY$ order. This kind of symmetry breaking and the consequent long range order is forbidden for short range interacting systems by the Mermin-Wagner theorem. Intriguingly, we find that the $XY$ order can be induced by even an infinitesimally weak infinite range interaction. Furthermore, we demonstrate that in the $U(1)$ symmetry broken phase, the half chain entanglement entropy violates the area law logarithmically. Finally, we discuss a proposal to verify our predictions in state-of-the-art quantum emulators.