Metastable decoherence-free subspaces and electromagnetically induced transparency in interacting many-body systems

Macieszczak, Katarzyna; Zhou, YanLi; Hofferberth, Sebastian; Garrahan, Juan P.; Li, Weibin; Lesanovsky, Igor

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of a generic interacting many-body system under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). This problem is of current relevance due to its connection to non-linear optical media realized by Rydberg atoms. In an interacting system the structure of the dynamics and the approach to the stationary state becomes far more complex than in the case of conventional EIT. In particular, we discuss the emergence of a metastable decoherence free subspace, whose dimension for a single Rydberg excitation grows linearly in the number of atoms. On approach to stationarity this leads to a slow dynamics which renders the typical assumption of fast relaxation invalid. We derive analytically the effective non-equilibrium dynamics in the decoherence free subspace which features coherent and dissipative two-body interactions. We discuss the use of this scenario for the preparation of collective entangled dark states and the realization of general unitary dynamics within the spin-wave subspace.

Citation

Macieszczak, K., Zhou, Y., Hofferberth, S., Garrahan, J. P., Li, W., & Lesanovsky, I. (2017). Metastable decoherence-free subspaces and electromagnetically induced transparency in interacting many-body systems. Physical Review A, 96(4), Article 043860. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.96.043860

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 4, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Oct 26, 2017
• Publication Date: Oct 26, 2017
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 26, 2017
• Journal: Physical Review A
• Print ISSN: 2469-9926
• Electronic ISSN: 2469-9934
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 96
• Issue: 4
• Article Number: 043860
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.96.043860
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/886459
• Publisher URL: https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.96.043860
• Contract Date: Oct 5, 2017