We study the dynamics of a one-dimensional Rydberg lattice gas under facilitation (anti-blockade) conditions which implements a so-called kinetically constrained spin system. Here an atom can only be excited to a Rydberg state when one of its neighbors is already excited. Once two or more atoms are simultaneously excited mechanical forces emerge, which couple the internal electronic dynamics of this many-body system to external vibrational degrees of freedom in the lattice. This electron-phonon coupling results in a so-called phonon dressing of many-body states which in turn impacts on the facilitation dynamics. In our theoretical study we focus on a scenario in which all energy scales are sufficiently separated such that a perturbative treatment of the coupling between electronic and vibrational states is possible. This allows to analytically derive an effective Hamiltonian for the evolution of clusters of consecutive Rydberg excitations in the presence of phonon dressing. We analyze the spectrum of this Hamiltonian and show --- by employing Fano resonance theory --- that the interaction between Rydberg excitations and lattice vibrations leads to the emergence of slowly decaying bound states that inhibit fast relaxation of certain initial states.
We study the dynamics of a one-dimensional Rydberg lattice gas under facilitation (anti-blockade) conditions which implements a so-called kinetically constrained spin system. Here an atom can only be excited to a Rydberg state when one of its neighbors is already excited. Once two or more atoms are simultaneously excited mechanical forces emerge, which couple the internal electronic dynamics of this many-body system to external vibrational degrees of freedom in the lattice. This electron-phonon coupling results in a so-called phonon dressing of many-body states which in turn impacts on the facilitation dynamics. In our theoretical study we focus on a scenario in which all energy scales are sufficiently separated such that a perturbative treatment of the coupling between electronic and vibrational states is possible. This allows to analytically derive an effective Hamiltonian for the evolution of clusters of consecutive Rydberg excitations in the presence of phonon dressing. We analyze the spectrum of this Hamiltonian and show --- by employing Fano resonance theory --- that the interaction between Rydberg excitations and lattice vibrations leads to the emergence of slowly decaying bound states that inhibit fast relaxation of certain initial states.
We explore the relaxation dynamics of elementary spin clusters in a kinetically constrained spin system. Inspired by experiments with Rydberg lattice gases, we focus on the situation in which an excited spin leads to a "facilitated" excitation of a neighboring spin. We show that even weak interactions that extend beyond nearest neighbors can have a dramatic impact on the relaxation behavior: they generate a linear potential, which under certain conditions leads to the onset of Bloch oscillations of spin clusters. These hinder the expansion of a cluster and, more generally, the relaxation of many-body states toward equilibrium. This shows that nonergodic behavior in kinetically constrained systems may occur as a consequence of the interplay between reduced connectivity of many-body states and weak interparticle interactions. We furthermore show that the emergent Bloch oscillations identified here can be detected in experiment through measurements of the Rydberg atom density and discuss how spin-orbit coupling between internal and external degrees of freedom of spin clusters can be used to control their relaxation behavior.
Quantum spin systems with kinetic constraints have become paradigmatic for exploring collective dynamical behavior in many-body systems. Here we discuss a facilitated spin system which is inspired by recent progress in the realization of Rydberg quantum simulators. This platform allows to control and investigate the interplay between facilitation dynamics and the coupling of spin degrees of freedom to lattice vibrations. Developing a minimal model, we show that this leads to the formation of polaronic quasiparticle excitations which are formed by many-body spin states dressed by phonons. We investigate in detail the properties of these quasiparticles, such as their dispersion relation, effective mass, and the quasiparticle weight. Rydberg lattice quantum simulators are particularly suited for studying this phonon-dressed kinetically constrained dynamics as their exaggerated length scales permit the site-resolved monitoring of spin and phonon degrees of freedom.
We investigate the dynamics of a one-dimensional spin system with facilitation constraint that can be studied using Rydberg atoms in arrays of optical tweezer traps. The elementary degrees of freedom of the system are domains of Rydberg excitations that expand ballistically through the lattice. Because of mechanical forces, Rydberg excited atoms are coupled to vibrations within their traps. At zero temperature and large trap depth, it is known that virtually excited lattice vibrations only renormalize the timescale of the ballistic propagation. However, when vibrational excitations are initially present-i.e., when the external motion of the atoms is prepared in an excited Fock state, coherent state or thermal state-resonant scattering between spin domain walls and phonons takes place. This coherent and deterministic process, which is free from disorder, leads to a reduction of the power-law exponent characterizing the expansion of spin domains. Furthermore, the spin domain dynamics is sensitive to the coherence properties of the atoms' vibrational state, such as the relative phase of coherently superimposed Fock states. Even for a translationally invariant initial state the latter manifests macroscopically in a phase-sensitive asymmetric expansion.
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].
When Rydberg states are excited in a dense atomic gas, the mean number of excited atoms reaches a stationary value after an initial transient period. We shed light on the origin of this steady state that emerges from a purely coherent evolution of a closed system. To this end, we consider a one-dimensional ring lattice and employ the perfect blockade model, i.e. the simultaneous excitation of Rydberg atoms occupying neighboring sites is forbidden. We derive an equation of motion that governs the system's evolution in excitation number space. This equation possesses a steady state that is strongly localized. Our findings show that this state is, to good accuracy, given by the density matrix of the microcanonical ensemble where the corresponding microstates are the zero-energy eigenstates of the interaction Hamiltonian. We analyze the statistics of the Rydberg atom number count, providing expressions for the number of excited Rydberg atoms and the Mandel Q -parameter in equilibrium.
We study the excitation dynamics of Rydberg atoms in a one-dimensional lattice with periodic boundary conditions where the atomic Rydberg states are resonantly excited from the electronic ground state. Our description of the corresponding dynamics is numerically exact within the perfect blockade regime, i.e., no two atoms in a given range can be excited. The time evolution of the mean Rydberg density, density-density correlations, as well as entanglement properties is analyzed in detail. We demonstrate that the short-time dynamics is universal and dominated by quantum phenomena, while for larger time the characteristics of the lattice become important and the classical features determine the dynamics. The results of the perfect blockade approach are compared to the predictions of an effective Hamiltonian which includes the interaction of two neighboring Rydberg atoms up to the second-order perturbation theory.