Driven-dissipative open quantum many-body systems exhibit rich phases that are characterized by the steady states in the long-time dynamics. However, lossy open systems inevitably decay to the vacuum, making their transient evolution the primary focus. Assuming the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov ansatz, we derive a generalized time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equation based on the least action principle for open quantum systems. By solving the quench dynamics after abruptly introducing inelastic scattering or one-body loss in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer limit, we reveal a generic dynamical phase transition: the superfluid order parameter vanishes non-analytically while the superfluid fraction's first-order time derivative undergoes a discontinuous change at a finite critical time. This marks a new paradigm of dynamical phase transitions, distinct from those in closed systems, where the initial state must be finely tuned.
Driven-dissipative open quantum many-body systems exhibit rich phases that are characterized by the steady states in the long-time dynamics. However, lossy open systems inevitably decay to the vacuum, making their transient evolution the primary focus. Assuming the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov ansatz, we derive a generalized time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equation based on the least action principle for open quantum systems. By solving the quench dynamics after abruptly introducing inelastic scattering or one-body loss in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer limit, we reveal a generic dynamical phase transition: the superfluid order parameter vanishes non-analytically while the superfluid fraction's first-order time derivative undergoes a discontinuous change at a finite critical time. This marks a new paradigm of dynamical phase transitions, distinct from those in closed systems, where the initial state must be finely tuned.
We investigate nonequilibrium dynamics of a triad of fermionic superfluids connected via Josephson junctions, following sudden switch-on of two-body loss in one of the three superfluids. By formulating the dissipative BCS theory for the Lindblad equation, we find that the superfluid order parameter exhibits a phase rotation, thereby giving rise to three types of dc Josephson currents corresponding to different junctions. We demonstrate that, when the tunneling amplitude V31 between superfluids without two-body loss is weak, a two-step nonequilibrium phase transition characterized by the vanishing dc Josephson currents occurs: dissipation first induces the nonequilibrium phase transition by making one dc Josephson current finite, while further increasing dissipation makes this remaining dc Josephson current vanish. By contrast, when V31 is strong, dissipation induces the nonequilibrium phase transition in which all dc Josephson currents simultaneously vanish. An analytical study based on a simplified model further supports this observation.
We predict a new mechanism to induce collective excitations and a nonequilibrium phase transition of fermionic superfluids via a sudden switch on of two-body loss, for which we extend the BCS theory to fully incorporate a change in particle number. We find that a sudden switch on of dissipation induces an amplitude oscillation of the superfluid order parameter accompanied by a chirped phase rotation as a consequence of particle loss. We demonstrate that when dissipation is introduced to one of the two superfluids coupled via a Josephson junction, it gives rise to a nonequilibrium dynamical phase transition characterized by the vanishing dc Josephson current. The dissipation-induced collective modes and nonequilibrium phase transition can be realized with ultracold fermionic atoms subject to inelastic collisions.
We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of a many-body bosonic system on a lattice, subject to driving and dissipation. The time evolution is described by a master equation, which we treat within a generalized Gutzwiller mean field approximation for density matrices. The dissipative processes are engineered such that the system, in the absence of interaction between the bosons, is driven into a homogeneous steady state with off-diagonal long-range order. We investigate how the coherent interaction affects the properties of the steady state of the system qualitatively and derive a nonequilibrium phase diagram featuring a phase transition into a steady state without long-range order. The phase diagram also exhibits an extended domain where an instability of the homogeneous steady state gives rise to a persistent density pattern with spontaneously broken translational symmetry. In the limit of low particle density, we provide a precise analytical description of the time evolution during the instability. Moreover, we investigate the transient following a quantum quench of the dissipative processes and we elucidate the prominent role played by collective topological variables in this regime.
We introduce time-dependent variational principles to study the non-unitary dynamics of open quantum many-body systems, including dynamics described by the full Lindblad master equation, the non-Hermitian dynamics corresponding to the no-click limit of the fully post-selected quantum trajectories, and the dynamics described by a hybrid Lindbladian with a control parameter α which interpolates between the full post-selection and averaging over all quantum trajectories. As an application we study the non-unitary dynamics of a lossy or driven-dissipative BCS superconductors, evolving in presence of two-body losses and two-body pumps. We show that the non-Hermitian limit acts as a singular limit of the hybrid dissipative dynamics, leading to a sharp modification of the universal approach to the driven-dissipative steady-states. By considering the dissipative dynamics with pair losses, we show that, as the non-Hermitian limit is approached, the density dynamics sharply evolves from a universal power-law to exponential decay that converges towards a quasi-steady plateau characterized by the freezing of the particle depletion due to pair losses. The reached quasi-stationary density increases as a function of the dissipation rate highlighting the emergence of a non-Hermitian Zeno effect in the lossy dynamics. For the driven-dissipative case, we show that, in the non-Hermitian limit, the system gets trapped into an effective negative temperature state, thus skipping the infinite temperature steady-state reached in the presence of finite contribution of the quantum jumps. We rationalize these findings in terms of the conservation of the length of the pseudospins which, in the non-Hermitian limit, suppresses the effective single-particle losses and pumps acting on the non-condensed particles.
Aim and Scope of this Book A plethora of systems exhibit phase transitions as the temperature or some other parameter is changed. Examples range from the ice-water phase transition observed in our daily life to the loss of ferromagnetism in iron or to the more sophisticated Mott insulator-superfluid phase transition observed in optical lattices [343]. The last five decades have witnessed a tremendous upsurge in the studies of phase transitions at finite temperature [727, 149, 333, 136, 494, 541, 556]. The success of Landau-Ginzburg theories and the concepts of spontaneous symmetry breaking and the renormalization group [27, 410, 821, 578] in explaining many of the finite temperature phase transitions occurring in nature has been spectacular. In this book, we will consider only a subclass of phase transitions called quantum phase transitions (QPTs) [154, 658, 725, 799, 185, 63, 62, 66, 141, 744] and we will discuss these mainly from the view point of recent studies of information and dynamics. QPTs are zero temperature phase transitions which are driven by quantum fluctuations and are usually associated with a non-analyticity in the ground state energy density of a quantum many-body Hamiltonian. We will focus on continuous QPTs where the order parameter vanishes continuously at the quantum critical point (QCP) at some value of the parameters which characterize the Hamiltonian. We will not discuss first order quantum phase transitions associated with an abrupt change in the order parameter. Usually, a first order phase transition is characterized by a finite discontinuity in the first derivative of the ground state energy density. A continuous QPT is similarly characterized by a finite discontinuity, or divergence, in the second derivative of the ground state energy density, assuming that the first derivative is continuous. This is of course the classical definition; we will later mention some QPTs where the ground state energy density is not necessarily singular.
The two-body loss associated with inelastic interactions between fermions plays a significant role in realistic many-body systems. Here we study a two-component non-Hermitian Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluidity with spin imbalance and two-body loss characterized by a complex-valued s-wave interaction in a square lattice. At the mean-field level, we map out the zero-temperature phase diagram and observe a dissipation-induced transition from superfluid to normal phase as well as a distinctive revival of the superfluid state in the weakly interacting regime applicable to both spin-balanced and spin-imbalanced systems. In the spin-imbalanced case, we find that the effective density of states involving weight functions reduces the regions in k space contributing to pairing, hence leading to a pronounced expansion of the normal phase on the phase diagram. Additionally, we analyze the order parameter, condensate energy, quasiparticle spectra, momentum distribution, and compressibility to characterize the presenting phases and phase transitions.