Abstract
Controlling the spread of correlations in quantum many-body systems is a key challenge at the heart of quantum science and technology. Correlations are usually destroyed by dissipation arising from coupling between a system and its environment. Here, we show that dissipation can instead be used to engineer a wide variety of spatio-temporal correlation profiles in an easily tunable manner. We describe how dissipation with any translationally-invariant spatial profile can be realized in cold atoms trapped in an optical cavity. A uniform external field and the choice of spatial profile can be used to design when and how dissipation creates or destroys correlations. We demonstrate this control by preferentially generating entanglement at a desired wavevector. We thus establish non-local dissipation as a new route towards engineering the far-from-equilibrium dynamics of quantum information, with potential applications in quantum metrology, state preparation, and transport.
Highlights
Correlations in many-body systems allow us to monitor the dynamics of quantum information by giving insight, for example, into the growth of quantum fluctuations and entanglement [1,2,3]
Our work demonstrates a practical route toward dissipative quantum information processing, showing that dissipation with a fully customizable spatial profile is readily realizable in systems of cold atoms trapped in a single-mode cavity, and that the behavior of this dissipative channel can be modulated via a uniform external field
We have demonstrated a practical route toward the investigation of dissipative quantum information processing
Summary
Correlations in many-body systems allow us to monitor the dynamics of quantum information by giving insight, for example, into the growth of quantum fluctuations and entanglement [1,2,3]. Nonunitary preparation of correlated states typically requires dissipation that is nonlocal in space and can lock the phases of two or more adjacent particles [4] Correlations generated by such dissipation, even with spatial profiles involving only neighboring particles, can endow a system with exotic character such as nontrivial topological properties [7,13,14,15,16], quantum critical points without equilibrium counterparts [5,8,17,18], and integrability revival in the presence of a drive [19,20]. Our work demonstrates a practical route toward dissipative quantum information processing, showing that dissipation with a fully customizable spatial profile is readily realizable in systems of cold atoms trapped in a single-mode cavity, and that the behavior of this dissipative channel can be modulated via a uniform external field.
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