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Updated: Nov 9, 2025

Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Bath-Induced Zeno Localization in Driven Many-Body Quantum Systems
Thibaud Maimbourg1, Denis M Basko2, Markus Holzmann2
1LPTMS, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, 91405 Orsay, France.
Abstract:
We study a quantum interacting spin system subject to an external drive and coupled to a thermal bath of vibrational modes, uncorrelated for different spins, serving as a model for dynamic nuclear polarization protocols. We show that even when the many-body eigenstates of the system are ergodic, a sufficiently strong coupling to the bath may effectively localize the spins due to many-body quantum Zeno effect. Our results provide an explanation of the breakdown of the thermal mixing regime experimentally observed above 4-5 K in these protocols.
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