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arXiv:1506.00906 · New Journal of Physics

From classical to quantum non-equilibrium dynamics of Rydberg excitations in optical lattices

Marco Mattioli, Alexander W. Glaetzle, Wolfgang Lechner

Published Nov 17, 2015• 33 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The glass phase and its quantum analog are prominent challenges of current non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics. As a model system to study the transition from classical to quantum glassy dynamics, we propose a setup of laser driven three-level atoms trapped in an optical lattice. Tuning the strength of the laser driving to the intermediate level allows one to study the transition from a classical kinetically constrained model to the coherent regime. For strong driving, Rydberg excitations evolve analogously to defects in the one-spin facilitated model, a minimal model known to exhibit glassy dynamics. In our setup, the constraints result from the interplay between Rydberg interactions and the laser detuning from the Rydberg state. The emerging heterogeneous relaxation timescales are tuneable over several orders of magnitudes. In the opposite limit of weak driving of the intermediate level, we find an effective cluster model which describes the dynamics in a reduced subspace of the allowed number and positions of Rydberg excitations. This subspace is uniquely determined by the initial state and is characterized by a fixed number of clusters of Rydberg excitations. In addition, we investigate the influence of random fields on the classical relaxation. We find that the glassy dynamics can relax faster in the presence of weak random fields.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/17/11/113039

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The glass phase and its quantum analog are prominent challenges of current non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics. As a model system to study the transition from classical to quantum glassy dynamics, we propose a setup of laser driven three-level atoms trapped in an optical lattice. Tuning the strength of the laser driving to the intermediate level allows one to study the transition from a classical kinetically constrained model to the coherent regime. For strong driving, Rydberg excitations evolve analogously to defects in the one-spin facilitated model, a minimal model known to exhibit glassy dynamics. In our setup, the constraints result from the interplay between Rydberg interactions and the laser detuning from the Rydberg state. The emerging heterogeneous relaxation timescales are tuneable over several orders of magnitudes. In the opposite limit of weak driving of the intermediate level, we find an effective cluster model which describes the dynamics in a reduced subspace of the allowed number and positions of Rydberg excitations. This subspace is uniquely determined by the initial state and is characterized by a fixed number of clusters of Rydberg excitations. In addition, we investigate the influence of random fields on the classical relaxation. We find that the glassy dynamics can relax faster in the presence of weak random fields.
In this mini-review, we report results from M. Mattioli, et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 165302 (2013)], M. Dalmonte, et al. [Phys. Rev. B 92, 045106 (2015)] and M. Mattioli, et al. [New J. Phys. 17, 113039 (2015)], where it is shown that Rydberg atoms trapped in one-dimensional optical lattices are a useful tool to investigate the equilibrium phase diagram and the non-equilibrium dynamics of extended Hubbard models and Kinetically Constrained Models, respectively. Atoms weakly-dressed to an high-lying Rydberg state, which interact with a constant potential extended over several lattice sites, can be in an exotic quantum liquid state, the cluster Luttinger liquid phase [42, 43]. Furthermore, we show how a many-body model of interacting three-level atoms in the V-shaped configuration, where one of the level is a Rydberg state, might relax to equilibrium according to the same rules, so-called kinetic constraints, which are known to reproduce the characteristic dynamical arrest and separation of timescales of real glass-forming materials [62].
We show that the dynamics of a laser driven Rydberg gas in the limit of strong dephasing is described by a master equation with manifest kinetic constraints. The equilibrium state of the system is uncorrelated but the constraints in the dynamics lead to spatially correlated collective relaxation reminiscent of glasses. We study and quantify the evolution towards equilibrium in one and two dimensions, and analyze how the degree of glassiness and the relaxation time are controlled by the interaction strength between Rydberg atoms. We also find that spontaneous decay of Rydberg excitations leads to an interruption of glassy relaxation that takes the system to a highly correlated nonequilibrium stationary state. The results presented here, which are in principle also applicable to other systems such as polar molecules and atoms with large magnetic dipole moments, show that the collective behavior of cold atomic and molecular ensembles can be similar to that found in soft condensed-matter systems.
We explore the relaxation dynamics of quantum many-body systems that undergo purely dissipative dynamics through non-classical jump operators that can establish quantum coherence. Our goal is to shed light on the differences in the relaxation dynamics that arise in comparison to systems evolving via classical rate equations. In particular, we focus on a scenario where both quantum and classical dissipative evolution lead to a stationary state with the same values of diagonal or "classical" observables. As a basis for illustrating our ideas we use spin systems whose dynamics becomes correlated and complex due to dynamical constraints, inspired by kinetically constrained models (KCMs) of classical glasses. We show that in the quantum case the relaxation can be orders of magnitude slower than the classical one due to the presence of quantum coherences. Aspects of these idealized quantum KCMs become manifest in a strongly interacting Rydberg gas under electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) conditions in an appropriate limit. Beyond revealing a link between this Rydberg gas and the rather abstract dissipative KCMs of quantum glassy systems, our study sheds light on the limitations of the use of classical rate equations for capturing the non-equilibrium behavior of this many-body system.
Abstract We investigate the relaxation dynamics of a Rydberg gas in regimes where coherent processes and dissipation compete. In the strongly dissipative limit, the dynamics is known to be governed by an effective classical rate equation and to exhibit kinetically constrained, glassy relaxation towards a trivial stationary state. This behaviour originates from the Rydberg blockade, which prevents simultaneous excitations within a characteristic blockade radius. However, the fate of kinetic constraints in the weakly dissipative limit remains unexplored in large systems above one dimension. To access large system sizes and two-dimensional geometries, we employ the truncated Wigner approximation, a phase-space method that captures correlated many-body dynamics beyond classical rate equations. To probe the emergence of kinetic constraints on timescales where coherent and dissipative processes are comparable, we analyse the relaxation dynamics starting from two initial states: a fully polarised state and a Néel state, which belongs to a manifold of so-called quantum scars. In both cases, we observe a pronounced slowdown in the relaxation of the magnetisation towards the stationary state and identify transient signatures of quantum kinetically constrained dynamics in one and two dimensions.
Understanding the dynamics of strongly interacting disordered quantum systems is one of the most challenging problems in modern science, due to features such as the breakdown of thermalization and the emergence of glassy phases of matter.We report on the observation of anomalous relaxation dynamics in an isolated XXZ quantum spin system realized by an ultracold gas of atoms initially prepared in a superposition of two different Rydberg states.The total magnetization is found to exhibit subexponential relaxation analogous to classical glassy dynamics, but in the quantum case this relaxation originates from the buildup of nonclassical correlations.In both experiment and semiclassical simulations, we find the evolution toward a randomized state is independent of the strength of disorder up to a critical value.This hints toward a unifying description of relaxation dynamics in disordered isolated quantum systems, analogous to the generalization of statistical mechanics to out-of-equilibrium scenarios in classical spin glasses.
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 us 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.