Quantum Zeno suppression of dipole-dipole forces

We consider inter-atomic forces due to resonant dipole-dipole interactions within a dimer of highly excited Rydberg atoms, embedded in an ultra-cold gas. These forces rely on a coherent superposition of two-atom electronic states, which is destroyed by continuous monitoring of the dimer state through a detection scheme utilizing controllable interactions with the background gas atoms. We show that this intrinsic decoherence of the molecular energy surface can gradually deteriorate a repulsive dimer state, causing a mixing of attractive and repulsive character. For sufficiently strong decoherence, a Zeno-like effect causes a complete arrest of interatomic forces. We finally show how short decohering pulses can controllably redistribute population between the different molecular energy surfaces.Comment: 4+3 pages, 4+1 figure

Multi-Excitons in Flexible Rydberg Aggregates

Flexible Rydberg aggregates, assemblies of few Rydberg atoms coherently sharing electronic excitations while undergoing directed atomic motion, show great promise as quantum simulation platform for nuclear motional dynamics in molecules or quantum energy transport. Here we study additional features that are enabled by the presence of more than a single electronic excitation, thus considering multi-exciton states. We describe cases where these can be decomposed into underlying single exciton states and then present dynamical scenarios with atomic motion that illustrate exciton-exciton collisions, exciton routing, and strong non-adiabatic effects in simple one-dimensional settings.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure

Van-der-Waals stabilized Rydberg aggregates

Assemblies of Rydberg atoms subject to resonant dipole-dipole interactions form Frenkel excitons. We show that van-der-Waals shifts can significantly modify the exciton wave function, whenever atoms approach each other closely. As a result, attractive excitons and repulsive van-der-Waals interactions can be combined to form stable one-dimensional atom chains, akin to bound aggregates. Here the van-der-Waals shifts ensure a stronger homogeneous delocalisation of a single excitation over the whole chain, enabling it to bind up to six atoms. When brought into unstable configurations, such Rydberg aggregates allow the direct monitoring of their dissociation dynamics.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Break-up of Rydberg superatoms via dipole-dipole interactions

We investigate resonant dipole-dipole interactions between two "superatoms" of different angular momentum, consisting of two Rydberg-blockaded atom clouds where each of them carries initially a coherently shared single excitation. We demonstrate that the dipole-dipole interaction breaks up the superatoms by removing the excitations from the clouds. The dynamics is akin to an ensemble average over systems where only one atom per cloud participates in entangled motion and excitation transfer. Our findings should thus facilitate the experimental realization of adiabatic exciton transport in Rydberg systems by replacing single sites with atom clouds.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Solitons explore the quantum classical boundary

It is an open fundamental question how the classical appearance of our environment arises from the underlying quantum many-body theory. We propose that the quantum-classical boundary can be probed in collisions of bright solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates, where thousands of atoms form a large compound object at ultra cold temperatures. We show that these collisions exhibit intricate many-body quantum behavior, invalidating mean field theory. Prior to collision, solitons can loose their well defined quantum phase relation through phase diffusion, essentially caused by atom number fluctuations. This dephasing should typically render the subsequent dynamics more classical. Instead, we find that it opens the door for a tremendous proliferation of mesoscopic entanglement: After collision the two solitons find themselves in a superposition state of various constituent atom numbers, positions and velocities, in which all these quantities are entangled with those of the collision partner. As the solitons appear to traverse the quantum-classical boundary back and forth during their scattering process, they emerge as natural probe of mesoscopic quantum coherence and decoherence phenomena.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Hyper-entangling mesoscopic bound states

We predict hyper-entanglement generation during binary scattering of mesoscopic bound states, solitary waves in Bose-Einstein condensates containing thousands of identical Bosons. The underlying many-body Hamiltonian must not be integrable, and the pre-collision quantum state of the solitons fragmented. Under these conditions, we show with pure state quantum field simulations that the post-collision state will be hyper-entangled in spatial degrees of freedom and atom number within solitons, for realistic parameters. The effect links aspects of non-linear systems and quantum-coherence and the entangled post-collision state challenges present entanglement criteria for identical particles. Our results are based on simulations of colliding quantum solitons in a quintic interaction model beyond the mean-field, using the truncated Wigner approximation.Comment: 6 figure

The disordered Dicke model

We introduce and study the disordered Dicke model in which the spin-boson couplings are drawn from a random distribution with some finite width. Regarding the quantum phase transition we show that when the standard deviation $\sigma$ of the coupling strength gradually increases, the critical value of the mean coupling strength $\mu$ gradually decreases and after a certain $\sigma$ there is no quantum phase transition at all; the system always lies in the super-radiant phase. We derive an approximate expression for the quantum phase transition in the presence of disorder in terms of $\mu$ and $\sigma$, which we numerically verify. Studying the thermal phase transition in the disordered Dicke model, we obtain an analytical expression for the critical temperature in terms of the mean and standard deviation of the coupling strength. We observe that even when the mean of the coupling strength is zero, there is a finite temperature transition if the standard deviation of the coupling is sufficiently high. Disordered couplings in the Dicke model will exist in quantum dot superlattices, and we also sketch how they can be engineered and controlled with ultracold atoms or molecules in a cavity.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Trapping and binding by dephasing

The binding and trapping of particles usually rely on conservative forces, described by unitary quantum dynamics. We show that both can also arise solely from spatially dependent dephasing, the simplest type of decoherence. This can be based on continuous weak position measurements in only selected regions of space, for which we propose a practical realisation. For a single particle, we demonstrate a quantum particle-in-the-box based on dephasing. For two particles, we demonstrate their binding despite repulsive interactions, if their molecular states are dephased at large separations only. Both mechanisms are experimentally accessible, as we show for an example with Rydberg atoms in a cold gas background.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure