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Bound lattice complexes through distance selective two-body loss

Cenap Ates, Beatriz Olmos, Weibin Li, Igor Lesanovsky

Published Jul 26, 2012• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We show that in a gas of ultra cold atoms distance selective two-body loss can be engineered via the resonant laser excitation of atom pairs to interacting electronic states. In an optical lattice this leads to a dissipative Master equation dynamics with Lindblad jump operators that annihilate atom pairs with a specific interparticle distance. In conjunction with coherent hopping between lattice sites this unusual dissipation mechanism leads to the formation of coherent long-lived complexes that can even exhibit an internal level structure which is strongly coupled to their external motion. We analyze this counterintuitive phenomenon in detail in a system of hard-core bosons. While current research has established that dissipation in general can lead to the emergence of coherent features in many-body systems our work shows that strong non-local dissipation can effectuate a binding mechanism for particles.

Related papers

Dissipative Binding of Lattice Bosons through Distance-Selective Pair Loss

Cenap Ates, Beatriz Olmos, Weibin Li +1 more

We show that in a gas of ultracold atoms distance selective two-body loss can be engineered via the resonant laser excitation of atom pairs to interacting electronic states. In an optical lattice this leads to a dissipative master equation dynamics with Lindblad jump operators that annihilate atom pairs with a specific interparticle distance. In conjunction with coherent hopping between lattice sites this unusual dissipation mechanism leads to the formation of coherent long-lived complexes that can even exhibit an internal level structure which is strongly coupled to their external motion. We analyze this counterintuitive phenomenon in detail in a system of hard-core bosons. While current research has established that dissipation in general can lead to the emergence of coherent features in many-body systems our work shows that strong nonlocal dissipation can effectuate a binding mechanism for particles.

arXiv:1207.6291•Physical Review Letters•Dec 5, 2012•40 citations

Interplay between coherent and dissipative dynamics of bosonic doublons in an optical lattice

Manfred J. Mark, Stuart Flannigan, Florian Meinert +3 more

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.

•Oct 8, 2020•12 citations

Adiabatic quantum Zeno dynamics of bosonic atom pairs with large inelastic losses

Manel Bosch Aguilera, Rémy Vatré, Raphaël Bouganne +3 more

We report on experiments exploring the non-Hermitian dynamics of pairs of two-level atoms tightly confined in an optical lattice and driven by a near-resonant laser. Although spontaneous emission is negligible for the long-lived excited state, two-body dissipation arises from strong inelastic collisions between two atoms in the excited state. We demonstrate quasi-adiabatic control of the internal state of the pairs in the quantum Zeno regime where inelastic losses dominate. Preparing each atom pair in the longest-lived eigenstate of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian describing the dissipative dynamics, we measure a lifetime enhanced by more than two orders of magnitude in comparison to the bare two-body lifetime. The measured enhancement factor is in quantitative agreement with the expected lifetime of the prepared “non-Hermitian dressed state.”

•Jan 1, 2022•0 citations

Probing ultracold ytterbium in optical lattices with resonant light : from coherent control to dissipative dynamics

Raphaël Bouganne

In this manuscript I present an experimental investigation of the dynamics of an ultracold gas of bosonic ytterbium loaded into optical lattices and exposed to resonant light. The interaction between atoms and light makes it possible to study the coherence properties of the gas. The resonant driving is performed on the relevant optical transitions featured by ytterbium. On the one hand, I demonstrate the coherent driving of the internal state of the atoms on the clock transition, the excited state of which is metastable and can not spontaneously decay, thus preserving the coherence of the gas. The temporal internal dynamics in a deep lattice allows me to measure the collisional properties at low temperature for both clock states. On the other hand, I use the spontaneously emitted photons of the intercombination transition excited level to induce a coupling to the atomic external degrees of freedom. I present the momentum diffusion of a superfluid excited on this transition. Strong interactions between atoms slow down the decoherence and lead to an anomalous sub-diffusive relaxation. A simple model comprising atomic motion, interactions and dissipation accounts for our observations. A theoretical study of the dissipative dynamics in optical lattices sheds light on complementary phenomena such as induced dipole-dipole interactions or collective effects in spontaneous emission.

•Sep 24, 2018•0 citations

Dissipation as a resource for constrained dynamics in open many-body quantum systems

Benjamin Everest

This thesis studies non-equilibrium open quantum systems where the dissipation is crucial to the achievement of novel physical regimes. We focus on atomic systems which allow for the coupling of a ground state to a Rydberg state, relying on the strong interactions between Rydberg atoms to produce the collective behaviour that we aim to investigate. For atoms in an optical lattice undergoing standard dissipation forms, e.g. loss and dephasing, we find these simple settings allow for the production of models contained in the non-equilibrium realm. \nWe start by looking at a system with engineered pair dissipation on a one-dimensional lattice. When the dissipation is strong relative to a tunnelling process it creates a quantum Zeno effect which projects the system onto a Zeno-subspace. This subspace is found to contain complexes which experience a binding due to the dissipation. The properties of these complexes are found to feature spin-orbit coupling and, in certain instances, a flat band. \nWe then study what kinetically constrained models (KCMs) can be reproduced in a lattice system. KCMs are models which typically feature trivial steady states, but a complex relaxation dynamics. These models appear in the fields of glasses and soft matter physics. We find a general framework for the consideration of a quantum Hamiltonian and a classical potential with strong dephasing noise. We then focus on a model mimicking volume excluded KCMs and find characteristic constrained behaviour, such as ergodicity breaking. \nWe apply this framework to the decay of a many-body localised state in an open system with interactions in which we find the decay to be classical in the two interaction limits. For weak interactions, it follows a stretched exponential form due to pair relaxation, while for strong interactions the decay follows a compressed exponential, now being modelled as an Avrami process due to the correlated relaxation. We also find that on-site loss only affects the strong interacting limit. \nWe then move on to the study of universal non-equilibrium behaviour in the directed percolation (DP) class. We consider on-site atomic loss and gain as a substitute for the standard decay channel. We show that this replaces the absorbing state with an enlarged absorbing space, leading to a loss of the DP transition at lower average densities. This class of DP-like systems has received little study, and we present a method of experimentally realising it in current set-ups. \nWe finish with a look at a quantum DP model, where we consider its quantum and classical limits. We find that the transition changes from first to second order as the system becomes more classical, featuring a bi-critical point. We then numerically demonstrate that the same transitions are visible in idealised and Rydberg models.

•Jul 12, 2017•1 citation

Many-body out-of-equilibrium dynamics of hard-core lattice bosons with nonlocal loss

Benjamin Everest, Michael Hush, Igor Lesanovsky

We explore the dynamics of hard-core lattice bosons in the presence of strong nonlocal particle loss. The evolution occurs on two distinct time scales, first a rapid strongly correlated decay into a highly degenerate Zeno state subspace, followed by a slow almost coherent evolution. We analytically solve the fast initial dynamics of the system, where we specifically focus on an initial Mott insulator state, and perform an analysis of the particle arrangements in the Zeno subspace. We investigate the secondary slow relaxation process that follows and find an intricate regime where the competition between dissipation and coherence results in various types of interacting particle complexes. We classify them and analyze their spectral properties in the presence and absence of nearest-neighbor interactions. Under certain circumstances the dispersion relations of the complexes feature flat bands, which are a result of an effective spin-orbit coupling.

arXiv:1406.6097•Physical Review B•Oct 14, 2014•20 citations
We show that in a gas of ultra cold atoms distance selective two-body loss can be engineered via the resonant laser excitation of atom pairs to interacting electronic states. In an optical lattice this leads to a dissipative Master equation dynamics with Lindblad jump operators that annihilate atom pairs with a specific interparticle distance. In conjunction with coherent hopping between lattice sites this unusual dissipation mechanism leads to the formation of coherent long-lived complexes that can even exhibit an internal level structure which is strongly coupled to their external motion. We analyze this counterintuitive phenomenon in detail in a system of hard-core bosons. While current research has established that dissipation in general can lead to the emergence of coherent features in many-body systems our work shows that strong non-local dissipation can effectuate a binding mechanism for particles.
We show that in a gas of ultracold atoms distance selective two-body loss can be engineered via the resonant laser excitation of atom pairs to interacting electronic states. In an optical lattice this leads to a dissipative master equation dynamics with Lindblad jump operators that annihilate atom pairs with a specific interparticle distance. In conjunction with coherent hopping between lattice sites this unusual dissipation mechanism leads to the formation of coherent long-lived complexes that can even exhibit an internal level structure which is strongly coupled to their external motion. We analyze this counterintuitive phenomenon in detail in a system of hard-core bosons. While current research has established that dissipation in general can lead to the emergence of coherent features in many-body systems our work shows that strong nonlocal dissipation can effectuate a binding mechanism for particles.
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 report on experiments exploring the non-Hermitian dynamics of pairs of two-level atoms tightly confined in an optical lattice and driven by a near-resonant laser. Although spontaneous emission is negligible for the long-lived excited state, two-body dissipation arises from strong inelastic collisions between two atoms in the excited state. We demonstrate quasi-adiabatic control of the internal state of the pairs in the quantum Zeno regime where inelastic losses dominate. Preparing each atom pair in the longest-lived eigenstate of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian describing the dissipative dynamics, we measure a lifetime enhanced by more than two orders of magnitude in comparison to the bare two-body lifetime. The measured enhancement factor is in quantitative agreement with the expected lifetime of the prepared “non-Hermitian dressed state.”
In this manuscript I present an experimental investigation of the dynamics of an ultracold gas of bosonic ytterbium loaded into optical lattices and exposed to resonant light. The interaction between atoms and light makes it possible to study the coherence properties of the gas. The resonant driving is performed on the relevant optical transitions featured by ytterbium. On the one hand, I demonstrate the coherent driving of the internal state of the atoms on the clock transition, the excited state of which is metastable and can not spontaneously decay, thus preserving the coherence of the gas. The temporal internal dynamics in a deep lattice allows me to measure the collisional properties at low temperature for both clock states. On the other hand, I use the spontaneously emitted photons of the intercombination transition excited level to induce a coupling to the atomic external degrees of freedom. I present the momentum diffusion of a superfluid excited on this transition. Strong interactions between atoms slow down the decoherence and lead to an anomalous sub-diffusive relaxation. A simple model comprising atomic motion, interactions and dissipation accounts for our observations. A theoretical study of the dissipative dynamics in optical lattices sheds light on complementary phenomena such as induced dipole-dipole interactions or collective effects in spontaneous emission.
This thesis studies non-equilibrium open quantum systems where the dissipation is crucial to the achievement of novel physical regimes. We focus on atomic systems which allow for the coupling of a ground state to a Rydberg state, relying on the strong interactions between Rydberg atoms to produce the collective behaviour that we aim to investigate. For atoms in an optical lattice undergoing standard dissipation forms, e.g. loss and dephasing, we find these simple settings allow for the production of models contained in the non-equilibrium realm. \nWe start by looking at a system with engineered pair dissipation on a one-dimensional lattice. When the dissipation is strong relative to a tunnelling process it creates a quantum Zeno effect which projects the system onto a Zeno-subspace. This subspace is found to contain complexes which experience a binding due to the dissipation. The properties of these complexes are found to feature spin-orbit coupling and, in certain instances, a flat band. \nWe then study what kinetically constrained models (KCMs) can be reproduced in a lattice system. KCMs are models which typically feature trivial steady states, but a complex relaxation dynamics. These models appear in the fields of glasses and soft matter physics. We find a general framework for the consideration of a quantum Hamiltonian and a classical potential with strong dephasing noise. We then focus on a model mimicking volume excluded KCMs and find characteristic constrained behaviour, such as ergodicity breaking. \nWe apply this framework to the decay of a many-body localised state in an open system with interactions in which we find the decay to be classical in the two interaction limits. For weak interactions, it follows a stretched exponential form due to pair relaxation, while for strong interactions the decay follows a compressed exponential, now being modelled as an Avrami process due to the correlated relaxation. We also find that on-site loss only affects the strong interacting limit. \nWe then move on to the study of universal non-equilibrium behaviour in the directed percolation (DP) class. We consider on-site atomic loss and gain as a substitute for the standard decay channel. We show that this replaces the absorbing state with an enlarged absorbing space, leading to a loss of the DP transition at lower average densities. This class of DP-like systems has received little study, and we present a method of experimentally realising it in current set-ups. \nWe finish with a look at a quantum DP model, where we consider its quantum and classical limits. We find that the transition changes from first to second order as the system becomes more classical, featuring a bi-critical point. We then numerically demonstrate that the same transitions are visible in idealised and Rydberg models.
We explore the dynamics of hard-core lattice bosons in the presence of strong nonlocal particle loss. The evolution occurs on two distinct time scales, first a rapid strongly correlated decay into a highly degenerate Zeno state subspace, followed by a slow almost coherent evolution. We analytically solve the fast initial dynamics of the system, where we specifically focus on an initial Mott insulator state, and perform an analysis of the particle arrangements in the Zeno subspace. We investigate the secondary slow relaxation process that follows and find an intricate regime where the competition between dissipation and coherence results in various types of interacting particle complexes. We classify them and analyze their spectral properties in the presence and absence of nearest-neighbor interactions. Under certain circumstances the dispersion relations of the complexes feature flat bands, which are a result of an effective spin-orbit coupling.