We induce strong non-local interactions in a 2D Fermi gas in an optical lattice using Rydberg dressing. The system is approximately described by a $t-V$ model on a square lattice where the fermions experience isotropic nearest-neighbor interactions and are free to hop only along one direction. We measure the interactions using many-body Ramsey interferometry and study the lifetime of the gas in the presence of tunneling, finding that tunneling does not reduce the lifetime. To probe the interplay of non-local interactions with tunneling, we investigate the short-time relaxation dynamics of charge density waves in the gas. We find that strong nearest-neighbor interactions slow down the relaxation. Our work opens the door for quantum simulations of systems with strong non-local interactions such as extended Fermi-Hubbard models.
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