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arXiv:1804.03070 · Physical Review A

Glassy dynamics due to a trajectory phase transition in dissipative Rydberg gases

Carlos Pérez-Espigares, Igor Lesanovsky, Juan P. Garrahan, Ricardo Gutiérrez

Published Aug 30, 2018• 21 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

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 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.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.98.021804

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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.
In the presence of strong dephasing noise the dynamics of Rydberg gases becomes effectively classical, due to the rapid decay of quantum superpositions between atomic levels. Recently a great deal of attention has been devoted to the stochastic dynamics that emerges in that limit, revealing several interesting features, including kinetically-constrained glassy behaviour, self-similarity and aggregation effects. However, the non-equilibrium physics of these systems, in particular in the regime where coherent and dissipative processes contribute on equal footing, is yet far from being understood. To explore this we study the dynamics of a small one-dimensional Rydberg lattice gas subject to dephasing noise by numerically integrating the quantum Master equation. We find indications that the main features observed in the strongly dissipative limit persist when the dissipation is not strong enough to annihilate quantum coherences at the dynamically relevant time scales. These features include a power law growth of the density of excitations and the existence of a time-dependent Rydberg blockade radius. Our results indicate that the power-law growth of density of excitations is characterised by an exponent which decreases as the dissipation becomes weaker.
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.
Abstract In the presence of strong dephasing noise the dynamics of Rydberg gases becomes effectively classical, due to the rapid decay of quantum superpositions between atomic levels. Recently a great deal of attention has been devoted to the stochastic dynamics that emerges in that limit, revealing several interesting features, including kinetically constrained glassy behaviour, self-similarity and aggregation effects. However, the non-equilibrium physics of these systems, in particular in the regime where coherent and dissipative processes contribute on equal footing, is yet far from being understood. To explore this we study the dynamics of a small one-dimensional Rydberg lattice gas subject to dephasing noise by numerically integrating the quantum master equation. We interpolate between the coherent and the strongly dephased regime by defining a generalised concept of a blockade length. We find indications that the main features observed in the strongly dissipative limit persist when the dissipation is not strong enough to annihilate quantum coherences at the dynamically relevant time scales. These features include the existence of a time-dependent Rydberg blockade radius, and a growth of the density of excitations which is compatible with the power-law behaviour expected in the classical limit.
Dense Rydberg gases are out-of-equilibrium systems where strong density-density interactions give rise to effective kinetic constraints. They cause dynamic arrest associated with highly constrained many-body configurations, leading to slow relaxation and glassy behavior. Multicomponent Rydberg gases feature additional long-range interactions such as excitation exchange. These are analogous to particle swaps used to artificially accelerate relaxation in simulations of atomistic models of classical glass formers. In Rydberg gases, however, swaps are real physical processes, which provide dynamical shortcuts to relaxation. They permit the accelerated approach to stationarity in experiment and at the same time have an impact on the nonequilibrium stationary state. In particular, their interplay with radiative decay processes amplifies irreversibility of the dynamics, an effect which we quantify via the entropy production at stationarity. Our work highlights an intriguing analogy between real dynamical processes in Rydberg gases and artificial dynamics underlying advanced Monte Carlo methods. Moreover, it delivers a quantitative characterization of the dramatic effect swaps have on the structure and dynamics of their stationary state.
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.
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.