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Dissipation-induced structural instability and chiral dynamics in a quantum gas.
Nishant Dogra1, Manuele Landini1, Katrin Kroeger1
1Institute for Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
Science (New York, N.Y.)
|December 21, 2019
Summary
Researchers observed a chiral nonstationary state in a synthetic many-body system. This state, arising from controlled unitary and dissipative couplings in a spinor Bose gas, relates to positional instability.
Area of Science:
- Quantum physics
- Atomic physics
- Many-body systems
Background:
- Many-body systems evolve via dissipative and unitary processes.
- The interplay of these processes can cause dynamical phase transitions and instabilities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To observe and characterize a nonstationary chiral state in a synthetic many-body system.
- To investigate the role of independently controllable unitary and dissipative couplings.
Main Methods:
- Experiment using a spinor Bose gas interacting with an optical resonator.
- Utilizing orthogonal quadratures of the resonator field for coherent coupling.
- Employing resonator losses for dissipative coupling between atomic spatial modes.
Main Results:
- Observation of a nonstationary state with chiral characteristics.
- Demonstration of independently controllable unitary and dissipative couplings.
- In a regime of dominant dissipation, chiral evolution was observed and linked to positional instability.
Conclusions:
- Synthetic many-body systems offer a platform to study complex quantum phenomena.
- Controllable dissipation can drive chiral dynamics and instabilities in quantum systems.
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