Complex coherent quantum many-body dynamics through dissipation

Journal article

The assumption that physical systems relax to a stationary state in the long-time limit underpins statistical physics and much of our intuitive understanding of scientific phenomena. For isolated systems this follows from the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. When an environment is present the expectation is that all of phase space is explored, eventually leading to stationarity. Notable exceptions are decoherence-free subspaces that have important implications for quantum technologies. These have been studied for systems with a few degrees of freedom only. Here we identify simple and generic conditions for dissipation to prevent a quantum many-body system from ever reaching a stationary state. We go beyond dissipative quantum state engineering approaches towards controllable long-time non-stationary dynamics typically associated with macroscopic complex systems. This coherent and oscillatory evolution constitutes a dissipative version of a quantum time-crystal. We discuss the possibility of engineering such complex dynamics with fermionic ultracold atoms in optical lattices.

Authors: Buča, B; Tindall, J; Jaksch, D

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer Nature
• Journal: Nature Communications
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 2019
• Article number: 1730
• Publication date: 2019-04-15
• Acceptance date: 2019-03-27
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09757-y
• EISSN: 2041-1723
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR