Open many-body quantum systems have recently gained renewed interest in the context of quantum information science and quantum transport with biological clusters and ultracold atomic gases. A series of results in diverse setups is presented, based on a Master equation approach to describe the dissipative dynamics of ultracold bosons in a one-dimensional lattice. The creation of mesoscopic stable many-body structures in the lattice is predicted and the non-equilibrium transport of neutral atoms in the regime of strong and weak interactions is studied.
Solid state quantum condensates can differ from other condensates, such as Helium, ultracold atomic gases, and superconductors, in that the condensing quasiparticles have relatively short lifetimes, and so, as for lasers, external pumping is required to maintain a steady state. In this chapter we present a non-equilibrium path integral approach to condensation in a dissipative environment and apply it to microcavity polaritons, driven out of equilibrium by coupling to multiple baths, describing pumping and decay. Using this, we discuss the relation between non-equilibrium polariton condensation, lasing, and equilibrium condensation.
We study ergodicity breaking in the clean Bose-Hubbard chain for small hopping strength. We see the existence of a non-ergodic regime by means of indicators as the half-chain entanglement entropy of the eigenstates, the average level spacing ratio, {the properties of the eigenstate-expectation distribution of the correlation and the scaling of the Inverse Participation Ratio averages.} We find that this ergodicity breaking {is different from many-body localization} because the average half-chain entanglement entropy of the eigenstates obeys volume law. This ergodicity breaking appears unrelated to the spectrum being organized in quasidegenerate multiplets at small hopping and finite system sizes, so in principle it can survive also for larger system sizes. We find that some imbalance oscillations in time which could mark the existence of a glassy behaviour in space are well described by the dynamics of a single symmetry-breaking doublet and {quantitatively} captured by a perturbative effective XXZ model. We show that the amplitude of these oscillations vanishes in the large-size limit. {Our findings are numerically obtained for systems with $L < 12$. Extrapolations of our scalings to larger system sizes should be taken with care, as discussed in the paper.
A semiclassical theory is provided for the metastability regime-diagram of atomtronic superfluid circuits. Such circuits typically exhibit high-dimensional chaos; and non-linear resonances that couple the Bogoliubov excitations manifest themselves. Contrary to the expectation these resonances do not originate from the familiar Beliaev and Landau damping terms. Rather, they are described by a variant of the Cherry Hamiltonian of celestial mechanics. Consequently we study the induced decay process, and its dependence on the number of sites and of condensed particles.
We present a comprehensive analysis of critical behavior in the driven-dissipative Bose condensation transition in three spatial dimensions. Starting point is a microscopic description of the system in terms of a many-body quantum master equation, where coherent and driven-dissipative dynamics occur on an equal footing. An equivalent Keldysh real time functional integral reformulation opens up the problem to a practical evaluation using the tools of quantum field theory. In particular, we develop a functional renormalization group approach to quantitatively explore the universality class of this stationary non-equilibrium system. Key results comprise the emergence of an asymptotic thermalization of the distribution function, while manifest non-equilibrium properties are witnessed in the response properties in terms of a new, independent critical exponent. Thus the driven-dissipative microscopic nature is seen to bear observable consequences on the largest length scales. The absence of two symmetries present in closed equilibrium systems - underlying particle number conservation and detailed balance, respectively - is identified as the root of this new non-equilibrium critical behavior. Our results are relevant for broad ranges of open quantum systems on the interface of quantum optics and many-body physics, from exciton-polariton condensates to cold atomic gases.
Open many-body quantum systems have attracted renewed interest in the context of quantum information science and quantum transport with biological clusters and ultracold atomic gases. The physical relevance in many-particle bosonic systems lies in the realization of counter-intuitive transport phenomena and the stochastic preparation of highly stable and entangled many-body states due to engineered dissipation. We review a variety of approaches to describe an open system of interacting ultracold bosons which can be modeled by a tight-binding Hubbard approximation. Going along with the presentation of theoretical and numerical techniques, we present a series of results in diverse setups, based on a master equation description of the dissipative dynamics of ultracold bosons in a one-dimensional lattice. Next to by now standard numerical methods such as the exact unravelling of the master equation by quantum jumps for small systems and beyond mean-field expansions for larger ones, we present a coherent-state path integral formalism based on Feynman-Vernon theory applied to a many-body context.