TY - JOUR

T1 - Driven-Dissipative Rydberg Blockade in Optical Lattices

AU - Kazemi, Javad

AU - Weimer, Hendrik

N1 - Funding Information: We thank C. Groß, P. Schauß, and J. Zeiher for valuable discussions on the experimental realization of dissipative Rydberg gases. This work was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) within SFB 1227 (DQ-mat, project A04), SPP 1929 (GiRyd), and under Germany’s Excellence Strategy–EXC-2123 QuantumFrontiers–90837967.

PY - 2023/4/21

Y1 - 2023/4/21

N2 - While dissipative Rydberg gases exhibit unique possibilities to tune dissipation and interaction properties, very little is known about the quantum many-body physics of such long-range interacting open quantum systems. We theoretically analyze the steady state of a van der Waals interacting Rydberg gas in an optical lattice based on a variational treatment that also includes long-range correlations necessary to describe the physics of the Rydberg blockade, i.e., the inhibition of neighboring Rydberg excitations by strong interactions. In contrast to the ground state phase diagram, we find that the steady state undergoes a single first order phase transition from a blockaded Rydberg gas to a facilitation phase where the blockade is lifted. The first order line terminates in a critical point when including sufficiently strong dephasing, enabling a highly promising route to study dissipative criticality in these systems. In some regimes, we also find good quantitative agreement of the phase boundaries with previously employed short-range models, however, with the actual steady states exhibiting strikingly different behavior.

AB - While dissipative Rydberg gases exhibit unique possibilities to tune dissipation and interaction properties, very little is known about the quantum many-body physics of such long-range interacting open quantum systems. We theoretically analyze the steady state of a van der Waals interacting Rydberg gas in an optical lattice based on a variational treatment that also includes long-range correlations necessary to describe the physics of the Rydberg blockade, i.e., the inhibition of neighboring Rydberg excitations by strong interactions. In contrast to the ground state phase diagram, we find that the steady state undergoes a single first order phase transition from a blockaded Rydberg gas to a facilitation phase where the blockade is lifted. The first order line terminates in a critical point when including sufficiently strong dephasing, enabling a highly promising route to study dissipative criticality in these systems. In some regimes, we also find good quantitative agreement of the phase boundaries with previously employed short-range models, however, with the actual steady states exhibiting strikingly different behavior.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85153866848&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.48550/arXiv.2209.00039

DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2209.00039

M3 - Article

C2 - 37154665

AN - SCOPUS:85153866848

VL - 13

JO - Physical review letters

JF - Physical review letters

SN - 0031-9007

IS - 16

M1 - 163601

ER -