Ergodicity breaking from Rydberg clusters in a driven-dissipative many-body system

Ding, Dongsheng; Bai, Zhengyang; Liu, Zongkai; Shi, Baosen; Guo, Guangcan; Li, Weibin; Adams, C Stuart

Abstract

It is challenging to probe ergodicity breaking trends of a quantum many-body system when dissipation inevitably damages quantum coherence originated from coherent coupling and dispersive two-body interactions. Rydberg atoms provide a test bed to detect emergent exotic many-body phases and nonergodic dynamics where the strong Rydberg atom interaction competes with and overtakes dissipative effects even at room temperature. Here, we report experimental evidence of a transition from ergodic toward ergodic breaking dynamics in driven-dissipative Rydberg atomic gases. The broken ergodicity is featured by the long-time phase oscillation, which is attributed to the formation of Rydberg excitation clusters in limit cycle phases. The broken symmetry in the limit cycle is a direct manifestation of many-body collective effects, which is verified experimentally by tuning atomic densities. The reported result reveals that Rydberg many-body systems are a promising candidate to probe ergodicity breaking dynamics, such as limit cycles, and enable the benchmark of nonequilibrium phase transition.

Citation

Ding, D., Bai, Z., Liu, Z., Shi, B., Guo, G., Li, W., & Adams, C. S. (2024). Ergodicity breaking from Rydberg clusters in a driven-dissipative many-body system. Science Advances, 10(9), Article eadl5893. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adl5893

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 29, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Mar 1, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024-03
• Deposit Date: Jan 29, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 12, 2024
• Journal: Science Advances
• Electronic ISSN: 2375-2548
• Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 9
• Article Number: eadl5893
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adl5893
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/30507079
• Publisher URL: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl5893