The quantum dynamics of interacting bosons in a one-dimensional (1D) system is investigated numerically. We consider dissipative and conservative two-particle interactions, and integrate the master equation describing the system dynamics via a time-evolving block-decimation (TEBD) algorithm. Our numerical simulations directly apply to stationary-light polaritons in systems where atoms and photons are confined to the hollow core of a photonic crystal fibre. We show that a two-particle loss term can drive an initially uncorrelated state into a regime where correlations effectively inhibit the dissipation of particles. The correlations induced by two-particle losses are compared with those generated by an elastic repulsion. For the considered time range, we find a similar behaviour in local density–density correlations but we find differences in non-local correlations.
The quantum dynamics of interacting bosons in a one-dimensional (1D) system is investigated numerically. We consider dissipative and conservative two-particle interactions, and integrate the master equation describing the system dynamics via a time-evolving block-decimation (TEBD) algorithm. Our numerical simulations directly apply to stationary-light polaritons in systems where atoms and photons are confined to the hollow core of a photonic crystal fibre. We show that a two-particle loss term can drive an initially uncorrelated state into a regime where correlations effectively inhibit the dissipation of particles. The correlations induced by two-particle losses are compared with those generated by an elastic repulsion. For the considered time range, we find a similar behaviour in local density–density correlations but we find differences in non-local correlations.
Abstract Motivated by the recent experiments on engineering localized losses in quantum gases, we study the dynamics of interacting bosons in a two-dimensional optical lattice with local dissipation. Together with the Gutzwiller mean-field theory for density matrices and Lindblad master equation, we show how the onsite interaction between bosons affects the particle loss for various strengths of dissipation. For moderate dissipation, the trend in particle loss differs significantly near the superfluid-Mott boundary than the deep superfluid regime. While the loss is suppressed for stronger dissipation in the deep superfluid regime, revealing the typical quantum Zeno effect, the loss near the phase boundary shows non-monotonic dependence on the dissipation strength. We furthermore show that close to the phase boundary, the long-time dissipative dynamics is different from the deep superfluid regime. Thus the loss of particle due to dissipation may act as a probe to differentiate strongly-correlated superfluid regime from its weakly-correlated counterpart.
In the first part, we investigate the effect of long range particle exchange in ideal bosonic chains. We establish that by using the Heisenberg formalism along with matrix product state representation we can study the evolution as well as the ground state of bosonic arrangements while including terms beyond next-neighbour hopping. The method is then applied to analyse the quench dynamics of condensates in a trapping potential and also to study the emergence of entanglement as a result of collision in boson chains. In the second part, we study the ground state as well as the dynamics of 1D boson arrangements with local repulsive interactions and nearest-neighbour exchange using numerical techniques based on time evolving block decimation (TEBD). We focus on the development of quantum correlations between the terminal places of these arrangements. We find that long-range entanglement in the ground state arises as a result of intense boson tunnelling taking place across the whole chain in systems with appropriate hopping coefficients. Additionally, we identify the perturbations necessary to increase the entanglement between the end sites above their ground state values. In the final part, we study the wave function of a kicked condensate using a perturbative approach and compare the results obtained in this way with numerical simulations.
We propose an optical simulation of dissipation-induced correlations in one-dimensional (1D) interacting bosonic systems, using a two-dimensional (2D) array of linear photonic waveguides and only classical light. We show that for the case of two bosons in a 1D lattice, one can simulate on-site two-body dissipative dynamics using a linear 2D waveguide array with lossy diagonal waveguides. The intensity distribution of the propagating light directly maps out the wave function, allowing one to observe the dissipation-induced correlations with simple measurements. Beyond the on-site model, we also show that a generalised model containing nearest-neighbour dissipative interaction can be engineered and probed in the proposed set-up.
A master equation approach for the description of dark-state polaritons in coherently driven atomic media is presented. This technique provides a description of light-matter interactions under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) that is well suited for the treatment of polariton losses. The master equation approach allows us to describe general polariton-polariton interactions that may be conservative, dissipative, or a mixture of both. In particular, it enables us to study dissipation-induced correlations as a means for the creation of strongly correlated polariton systems. Our technique reveals a loss mechanism for stationary-light polaritons that has not been discussed so far. We find that polariton losses in level configurations with nondegenerate ground states can be a multiple of those in level schemes with degenerate ground states.
We review recent results on the coherence and superfluidity of driven dissipative condensates, i.e., systems of weakly interacting nonconserved bosons, such as polariton condensates. The presence of driving and dissipation has dramatically different effects depending on dimensionality and anisotropy. In three dimensions, equilibrium behaviour is recovered at large scales for static correlations, while the dynamical behaviour is altered by the microscopic driving. In two dimensions, for an isotropic system, drive and dissipation destroy the algebraic order that would otherwise exist; however, a sufficiently anisotropic system can still show algebraic phase correlations. We discuss the consequences of this behaviour for recent experiments measuring phase coherence and outline potential measurements that might directly probe superfluidity. Introduction This chapter is dedicated to superfluidity and its relation to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), a topic with a long history. Many reviews of the concepts of condensation and superfluidity in thermal equilibrium can be found; see for example Refs. [1, 2, 3, 4]. The focus of this chapter is on how these concepts apply (or fail to apply) to driven dissipative condensates – systems of bosons with a finite lifetime, in which loss is balanced by continuous pumping. We focus entirely on the steady state of such systems, neglecting transient, time-dependent behaviour. Experimentally, the most studied example of a driven dissipative condensate has been microcavity polaritons, an overview of which is given in Ref. [5] and Chapter 4. However, similar issues can arise in many other systems, most obviously photon condensates [6] (see also Chapter 19), magnon condensates [7] (see also Chapters 25–26), and potentially exciton condensates (although typical exciton lifetimes are much longer than for polaritons). Even experiments on cold atoms (see, e.g., Chapter 3) could be driven into a regime in which such physics occurs, when considering continuous loading of atoms balancing threebody losses [8] or atom laser setups [9, 10, 11]. Experiments on polaritons are two-dimensional, and in two dimensions it is particularly important to clearly distinguish three concepts often erroneously treated as equivalent: superfluidity, condensation, and phase coherence. This is because no true Bose-Einstein condensate exists in a homogeneous two-dimensional system.
We study non-equilibrium and strongly-correlated dynamics in two contexts. We begin by analysing quantum many-body systems out of equilibrium through the lens of cold atomic impurities in Bose gases. Such highly-imbalanced mixtures provide a controlled arena for the study of interactions, dissipation, decoherence and transport in a many-body quantum environment. Specifically we investigate the oscillatory dynamics of a trapped and initially highly-localised impurity interacting with a weakly-interacting trapped quasi low-dimensional Bose gas. This relates to and goes beyond a recent experiment by the Inguscio group in Florence. We witness a delicate interplay between the self-trapping of the impurity and the inhomogeneity of the Bose gas, and describe the dissipation of the energy of the impurity through phononic excitations of the Bose gas. We then study the transport of a driven, periodically-trapped impurity through a quasi one-dimensional Bose gas. We show that placing the weakly-interacting Bose gas in a separate periodic potential leads to a phononic excitation spectrum that closely mimics those in solid state systems. As a result we show that the impurity-Bose gas system exhibits phonon-induced resonances in the impurity current that were predicted to occur in solids decades ago but never clearly observed. Following this, allowing the bosons to interact strongly, we predict the effect of different strongly-correlated phases of the Bose gas on the motion of the impurity. We show that, by observing the impurity, properties of the excitation spectrum of the Bose gas, e.g., gap and bandwidth, may be inferred along with the filling of the bosonic lattice. In other words the impurity acts as a probe of its environment. To describe the dynamics of such a strongly-correlated system we use the powerful and near-exact time-evolving block decimation (TEBD) method, which we describe in detail. The second part of this thesis then analyses, for the first time, the performance of this method when applied to simulate non-equilibrium classical stochastic processes. We study its efficacy for a well-understood model of transport, the totally-asymmetric exclusion process, and find it to be accurate. Next, motivated by the inefficiency of sampling-based numerical methods for high variance observables we adapt and apply TEBD to simulate a path-dependent observable whose variance increases exponentially with system size. Specifically we calculate the expected value of the exponential of the work done by a varying magnetic field on a one-dimensional Ising model undergoing Glauber dynamics. We confirm using Jarzynski's equality that the TEBD method remains accurate and efficient. Therefore TEBD and related methods complement and challenge the usual Monte Carlo-based simulators of non-equilibrium stochastic processes.