We study the dynamics of a strongly interacting bosonic quantum gas in an optical lattice potential under the effect of a dissipative environment. We show that the interplay between the dissipative process and the Hamiltonian evolution leads to an unconventional dynamical behavior of local number fluctuations. In particular, we show, both analytically and numerically, the emergence of an anomalous diffusive evolution in configuration space at short times and, at long times, an unconventional dynamics dominated by rare events. Such rare events, common in disordered and frustrated systems, are due here to strong interactions. This complex two-stage dynamics reveals information on the level structure of the strongly interacting gas.
We study the dynamics of a strongly interacting bosonic quantum gas in an optical lattice potential under the effect of a dissipative environment. We show that the interplay between the dissipative process and the Hamiltonian evolution leads to an unconventional dynamical behavior of local number fluctuations. In particular, we show, both analytically and numerically, the emergence of an anomalous diffusive evolution in configuration space at short times and, at long times, an unconventional dynamics dominated by rare events. Such rare events, common in disordered and frustrated systems, are due here to strong interactions. This complex two-stage dynamics reveals information on the level structure of the strongly interacting gas.
We study how the interplay of dissipation and interactions affects the dynamics of a bosonic many-body quantum system. In the presence of both dissipation and strongly repulsive interactions, observables such as the coherence and the density fluctuations display three dynamical regimes: an initial exponential variation followed by a power-law regime, and finally a slow exponential convergence to their asymptotic values. These very long-time scales arise as dissipation forces the population of states disfavored by interactions. The long-time, strong coupling dynamics are understood by performing a mapping onto a classical diffusion process displaying non-Brownian behavior. While both dissipation and strong interactions tend to suppress coherence when acting separately, we find that strong interaction impedes the decoherence process generated by the dissipation.
We observe the dissipative dynamics of a dense, strongly interacting gas of bosonic atom pairs in an optical lattice, controlling the strength of the two-body interactions over a wide parameter regime. We study how three-body losses contribute to the lattice dynamics, addressing a number of open questions related to the effects of strong dissipation in a many-body system, including the relationship to the continuous quantum Zeno effect. We observe rapid break-up of bound pairs for weak interactions, and for stronger interactions we see doublon decay rates that are asymmetric when changing from attractive and repulsive interactions and which strongly depend on the interactions and on-site loss rates. By comparing our experimental data with a theoretical analysis of few-body dynamics, we show that these features originate from a nontrivial combination of dissipative dynamics described by a lattice model beyond a standard Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, and the modification of three-atom dynamics on a single site, which is generated alongside strong three-body loss. Our results open new possibilities for investigating bosonic atoms with strong three-body loss features and allow for the better understanding of the parameter regimes that are required to realize strong effective three-body interactions.
We analyze the relaxation dynamics in an open system, composed by a quantum gas of bosons in a lattice interacting via both contact and global interactions. We report the onset of periodic oscillations of the atomic coherences exhibiting hallmarks of synchronization after a quantum quench. The dynamical behavior exhibits the many-body collapse and revival of atomic coherences and emerges from the interplay of the quantum dissipative nature of the cavity field and the presence of a (approximate) strong symmetry in the dissipative system. We further show that the approximate symmetry can dynamically self-organize. We argue that the approximate symmetry can be tailored to obtain long-lived coherences. These insights provide a general recipe to engineer the dynamics of globally interacting systems.
We explore the nonequilibrium dynamics of a density-ordered dipolar Bose gas in a finite one-dimensional optical lattice following a negative interaction quench, using the numerically exact multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons. The interaction sign reversal, effectively driving a crossover from long-range to short-range interactions, generates rich intra- and interwell tunneling dynamics spanning superfluid, Mott-insulating, and fragmented regimes. A striking finding is the robustness of the underlying crystal-state correlations against the quench, despite the strong dynamical response. We identify emergent excitation modes, including local breathing and dipole-like oscillations, via real- and momentum-space observables, and quantify tunneling through site-resolved position variance. One- and two-body Glauber correlation functions further uncover a direct connection between tunneling and correlation dynamics. Moreover, we show that combining interaction quenches with lattice-depth ramping enables controllable dynamical engineering, establishing dipolar lattice systems as a promising platform for nonequilibrium quantum simulation.
Quantum degenerate atomic gases offer a unique platform for the exploration of a wide variety of interacting many-body systems in a pristine environment, based on a set of powerful tools for the coherent control of the atoms' internal and external degrees of freedom. Here, we present experimental studies of strongly interacting bosonic mixtures in one-dimensional (1D) systems, in which the mobilities of the two species are independently controlled with a state-selective optical lattice. In a first experiment, we freeze out the tunneling of one species from a binary mixture, and study the formation of ``quantum emulsion'' states, where immobile atoms serve as a static, random disorder for a more mobile species. We investigate the 1D superfluid-to-insulator transition in the presence of this disorder, and make comparisons to the effects of quasi-disorder from an incommensurate optical lattice. We observe enhanced localization in the more random potential, highlighting the important role of correlations in disordered systems. Through a combined measurement of transport, localization, and excitation spectra, we are able to obtain strong evidence for observation of a disordered, insulating quantum phase, the 1D Bose glass. In a second experiment, we introduce a new experimental technique for the characterization of ultracold gases held in optical lattices. In analogy to neutron diffraction from solids, we use atomic de Broglie waves to non-destructively probe the spatial structure of 1D Mott insulators through elastic Bragg diffraction, and to probe inelastic band-structure excitations of more weakly interacting 1D Bose gases. Furthermore, we use the diffraction of matter waves to detect the formation of forced-antiferromagnetic ordering in a crystalline atomic spin mixture. Lastly, we study the dynamical response of matter waves to a periodically pulsed, incommensurate optical lattice, a situation that realizes a system of two coupled kicked quantum rotors. We observe that the coupling induces a suppression of energy growth at quantum resonances, and a localization-to-delocalization transition in momentum space for off-resonant driving. Our observations confirm a long-standing theoretical prediction for the two-rotor system, and illustrate how classical behavior can emerge from the evolution of a simple quantum system. | 193 pages
We study the dynamic structure factor of a one-dimensional Bose gas confined in an optical lattice and modeled by the Bose–Hubbard Hamiltonian, using a variety of numerical and analytical approaches. The dynamic structure factor, experimentally measurable by Bragg spectroscopy, is studied in three relevant cases: in the clean regime, featuring either a superfluid or a Mott phase; and in the presence of two types of (quasi-)disordered external potentials: a quasi-periodic potential obtained from a bichromatic superlattice and a random box disorder—both featuring a Bose-glass phase. In the clean case, we show the emergence of a gapped doublon mode (corresponding to a repulsively bound state) for incommensurate filling, well separated from the low-energy acoustic mode. In the disordered case, we show that the dynamic structure factor provides direct insight into the spatial structure of the excitations, unveiling their localized nature, which represents a fundamental signature of the Bose-glass phase. Furthermore, it provides a clear fingerprint of the very nature of the localization mechanism which differs for the two kinds of disorder potentials we consider. In special cases, the dynamic structure factor may provide an estimate of the position of the localization transition from superfluid to Bose glass, in a complementary manner to the information deduced from the momentum distribution.