Master equation approach for interacting slow- and stationary-light polaritons

A master equation approach for the description of dark-state polaritons in coherently driven atomic media is presented. This technique provides a description of light-matter interactions under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) that is well suited for the treatment of polariton losses. The master equation approach allows us to describe general polariton-polariton interactions that may be conservative, dissipative or a mixture of both. In particular, it enables us to study dissipation-induced correlations as a means for the creation of strongly correlated polariton systems. Our technique reveals a loss mechanism for stationary-light polaritons that has not been discussed so far. We find that polariton losses in level configurations with non-degenerate ground states can be a multiple of those in level schemes with degenerate ground states

Three-body bound states in dipole-dipole interacting Rydberg atoms

We show that the dipole-dipole interaction between three identical Rydberg atoms can give rise to bound trimer states. The microscopic origin of these states is fundamentally different from Efimov physics. Two stable trimer configurations exist where the atoms form the vertices of an equilateral triangle in a plane perpendicular to a static electric field. The triangle edge length typically exceeds $R\approx 2\,\mu\text{m}$, and each configuration is two-fold degenerate due to Kramers' degeneracy. The depth of the potential wells and the triangle edge length can be controlled by external parameters. We establish the Borromean nature of the trimer states, analyze the quantum dynamics in the potential wells and describe methods for their production and detection.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures and supplementary material; to appear in PR

A polynomial Ansatz for Norm-conserving Pseudopotentials

We show that efficient norm-conserving pseudopotentials for electronic structure calculations can be obtained from a polynomial Ansatz for the potential. Our pseudopotential is a polynomial of degree ten in the radial variable and fulfills the same smoothness conditions imposed by the Troullier-Martins method [Phys. Rev. B 43, 1993 (1991)] where pseudopotentials are represented by a polynomial of degree twenty-two. We compare our method to the Troullier-Martins approach in electronic structure calculations for diamond and iron in the bcc structure and find that the two methods perform equally well in calculations of the total energy. However, first and second derivatives of the total energy with respect to atomic coordinates converge significantly faster with the plane wave cutoff if the standard Troullier-Martins potentials are replaced by the pseudopotentials introduced here.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Probing microscopic models for system-bath interactions via parametric driving

We show that strong parametric driving of a quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to a thermal bath allows one to distinguish between different microscopic models for the oscillator-bath coupling. We consider a bath with an Ohmic spectral density and a model where the system-bath interaction can be tuned continuously between position and momentum coupling via the coupling angle $\alpha$. We derive a master equation for the reduced density operator of the oscillator in Born-Markov approximation and investigate its quasi-steady state as a function of the driving parameters, the temperature of the bath and the coupling angle $\alpha$. We find that the time-averaged variance of position and momentum exhibits a strong dependence on these parameters. In particular, we identify parameter regimes that maximise the $\alpha$-dependence and provide an intuitive explanation of our results.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Quantum mechanical calculation of Rydberg-Rydberg autoionization rates

We present quantum mechanical calculations of Auger decay rates for two Rubidium Rydberg atoms with weakly overlapping electron clouds. We neglect exchange effects and consider tensor products of independent atom states forming an approximate basis of the two-electron state space. We consider large sets of two-atom states with randomly chosen quantum numbers and find that the charge overlap between the two Rydberg electrons allows one to characterise the magnitude of the Auger decay rates. If the electron clouds overlap by more than one percent, the Auger decay rates increase approximately exponentially with the charge overlap. This finding is independent of the energy of the initial state.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Tensor network reduced order models for wall-bounded flows

We introduce a widely applicable tensor network-based framework for developing reduced order models describing wall-bounded fluid flows. As a paradigmatic example, we consider the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations and the lid-driven cavity in two spatial dimensions. We benchmark our solution against published reference data for low Reynolds numbers and find excellent agreement. In addition, we investigate the short-time dynamics of the flow at high Reynolds numbers for the liddriven and doubly-driven cavities. We represent the velocity components by matrix product states and find that the bond dimension grows logarithmically with simulation time. The tensor network algorithm requires at most a few percent of the number of variables parameterizing the solution obtained by direct numerical simulation, and approximately improves the runtime by an order of magnitude compared to direct numerical simulation on similar hardware. Our approach is readily transferable to other flows, and paves the way towards quantum computational fluid dynamics in complex geometries

Mott polaritons in cavity-coupled quantum materials

We show that strong electron-electron interactions in cavity-coupled quantum materials can enable collectively enhanced light-matter interactions with ultrastrong effective coupling strengths. As a paradigmatic example we consider a Fermi-Hubbard model coupled to a single-mode cavity and find that resonant electron-cavity interactions result in the formation of a quasi-continuum of polariton branches. The vacuum Rabi splitting of the two outermost branches is collectively enhanced and scales with $g_{\text{eff}}\propto\sqrt{2L}$, where $L$ is the number of electronic sites, and the maximal achievable value for $g_{\text{eff}}$ is determined by the volume of the unit cell of the crystal. We find that $g_{\text{eff}}$ for existing quantum materials can by far exceed the width of the first excited Hubbard band. This effect can be experimentally observed via measurements of the optical conductivity and does not require ultra-strong coupling on the single-electron level. Quantum correlations in the electronic ground state as well as the microscopic nature of the light-matter interaction enhance the collective light-matter interaction compared to an ensemble of independent two-level atoms interacting with a cavity mode.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1806.0675

Pulse-splitting in light propagation through NN-type atomic media due to an interplay of Kerr-nonlinearity and group velocity dispersion

We investigate the spatio-temporal evolution of a Gaussian probe pulse propagating through a four-level $N$-type atomic medium. At two-photon resonance of probe-and control fields, weaker probe pulses may propagate through the medium with low absorption and pulse shape distortion. In contrast, we find that increasing the probe pulse intensity leads to a splitting of the initially Gaussian pulse into a sequence of subpulses in the time domain. The number of subpulses arising throughout the propagation can be controlled via a suitable choice of the probe and control field parameters. Employing a simple theoretical model for the nonlinear pulse propagation, we conclude that the splitting occurs due to an interplay of Kerr nonlinearity and group velocity dispersion.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Steady-state negative Wigner functions of nonlinear nanomechanical oscillators

We propose a scheme to prepare nanomechanical oscillators in nonclassical steady states, characterized by a pronounced negative Wigner function. In our optomechanical approach, the mechanical oscillator couples to multiple laser driven resonances of an optical cavity. By lowering the resonance frequency of the oscillator via an inhomogeneous electrostatic field, we significantly enhance its intrinsic geometric nonlinearity per phonon. This causes the motional sidebands to split into separate spectral lines for each phonon number and transitions between individual phonon Fock states can be selectively addressed. We show that this enables the preparation of the nanomechanical oscillator in a single phonon Fock state. Our scheme can for example be implemented with a carbon nanotube dispersively coupled to the evanescent field of a state of the art whispering gallery mode microcavity