No Arabic abstract
The physics of highly excited Rydberg atoms is governed by blockade or exclusion interactions that hinder the excitation of atoms in the proximity of a previously excited one. This leads to cooperative effects and a relaxation dynamics displaying space-time heterogeneity similar to what is observed in the relaxation of glass-forming systems. Here we establish theoretically the existence of a glassy dynamical regime in an open Rydberg gas, associated with phase coexistence at a first-order transition in dynamical large deviation functions. This transition occurs between an active phase of low density in which dynamical processes take place on short timescales, and an inactive phase in which excited atoms are dense and the dynamics is highly arrested. We perform a numerically exact study and develop a mean-field approach that allows to understand the mechanics of this phase transition. We show that radiative decay --- which becomes experimentally relevant for long times --- moves the system away from dynamical phase coexistence. Nevertheless, the dynamical phase transition persists and causes strong fluctuations in the observed dynamics.
Dark states are stationary states of a dissipative, Lindblad-type time evolution with zero von Neumann entropy, therefore representing examples of pure, steady quantum states. Non-equilibrium dynamics featuring a dark state recently gained a lot of attraction since their implementation in the context of driven-open quantum systems represents a viable possibility to engineer unique, pure states. In this work, we analyze a driven many-body spin system, which undergoes a transition from a dark steady state to a mixed steady state as a function of the driving strength. This transition connects a zero entropy (dark) state with a finite entropy (mixed) state and thus goes beyond the realm of equilibrium statistical mechanics and becomes of genuine nonequilibrium character. We analyze the relevant long wavelength fluctuations driving this transition in a regime where the system performs a discontinuous jump from a dark to a mixed state by means of the renormalization group. This allows us to approach the nonequilibrium dark state transition and identify similarities and clear differences to common, equilibrium phase transitions, and to establish the phenomenology for a first order dark state phase transition.
The theory of continuous phase transitions predicts the universal collective properties of a physical system near a critical point, which for instance manifest in characteristic power-law behaviours of physical observables. The well-established concept at or near equilibrium, universality, can also characterize the physics of systems out of equilibrium. The most fundamental instance of a genuine non-equilibrium phase transition is the directed percolation universality class, where a system switches from an absorbing inactive to a fluctuating active phase. Despite being known for several decades it has been challenging to find experimental systems that manifest this transition. Here we show theoretically that signatures of the directed percolation universality class can be observed in an atomic system with long range interactions. Moreover, we demonstrate that even mesoscopic ensembles --- which are currently studied experimentally --- are sufficient to observe traces of this non-equilibrium phase transition in one, two and three dimensions.
We study the effects of dissipative boundaries in many-body systems at continuous quantum transitions, when the parameters of the Hamiltonian driving the unitary dynamics are close to their critical values. As paradigmatic models, we consider fermionic wires subject to dissipative interactions at the boundaries, associated with pumping or loss of particles. They are induced by couplings with a Markovian baths, so that the evolution of the system density matrix can be described by a Lindblad master equation. We study the quantum evolution arising from variations of the Hamiltonian and dissipation parameters, starting at t=0 from the ground state of the critical Hamiltonian. Two different dynamic regimes emerge: (i) an early-time regime for times t ~ L, where the competition between coherent and incoherent drivings develops a dynamic finite-size scaling, obtained by extending the scaling framework describing the coherent critical dynamics of the closed system, to allow for the boundary dissipation; (ii) a large-time regime for t ~ L^3 whose dynamic scaling describes the late quantum evolution leading to the t->infty stationary states.
We study the propagation of strongly interacting Rydberg polaritons through an atomic medium in a one-dimensional optical lattice. We derive an effective single-band Hubbard model to describe the dynamics of the dark state polaritons under realistic assumptions. Within this model, we analyze the driven-dissipative transport of polaritons through the system by considering a coherent drive on one side and by including the spontaneous emission of the metastable Rydberg state. Using a variational approch to solve the many-body problem, we find strong antibunching of the outgoing photons despite the losses from the Rydberg state decay.
Bose-Einstein condensation, the macroscopic occupation of a single quantum state, appears in equilibrium quantum statistical mechanics and persists also in the hydrodynamic regime close to equilibrium. Here we show that even when a degenerate Bose gas is driven into a steady state far from equilibrium, where the notion of a single-particle ground state becomes meaningless, Bose-Einstein condensation survives in a generalized form: the unambiguous selection of an odd number of states acquiring large occupations. Within mean-field theory we derive a criterion for when a single and when multiple states are Bose selected in a non-interacting gas. We study the effect in several driven-dissipative model systems, and propose a quantum switch for heat conductivity based on shifting between one and three selected states.