Professor Andrew Daley

Abstract:

We investigate the possibility of engineering dissipatively long-range order that is robust against heating in strongly interacting fermionic systems, relevant for atoms in cavity QED. It was previously shown [Tindall ] that it is possible to stabilize long-range order in a Hubbard model by exploiting a dissipative mechanism in the Lindblad limit, this latter being valid for spectrally unstructured baths. Here, we first show that this mechanism still holds when including additional spin-exchange interactions in the model, that is, for the tUJ model. Moreover, by means of a Redfield approach that goes beyond the Lindblad case, we show how the stability of the engineered state depends crucially on properties of the bath spectral density and discuss the feasibility of those properties in an experiment.

Abstract:

Disordered potentials fundamentally affect transport and coherence in quantum systems, giving rise to a Bose-glass phase in interacting bosonic systems—an insulating yet compressible phase lacking long-range coherence. Directly measuring a reduced coherence length of the Bose glass has been a outstanding challenge. We address this by employing Talbot interferometry combined with single-atom-resolved detection in a quantum-gas microscope. Using ultracold bosonic atoms in a two-dimensional lattice with site-resolved, reproducible disorder, we identify the Bose-glass phase through density distributions and particle-number fluctuations, quantified via the Edwards-Anderson parameter, and through the visibility of interference patterns after time of flight. By driving the system across the Bose-glass phase, we further observe signatures of nonergodic dynamics. Our studies provide a starting point to further explore disordered systems in and out of equilibrium, and are relevant for understanding the dynamics and stability of disordered and glasslike quantum states in solid-state systems.