Controlled open system dynamics in AMO quantum simulators

The developments over the past years in using AMO experimental platforms such as ultracold atoms and arrays of trapped ions to study strongly interacting systems also offer us exciting new opportunities to explore and understand many-body dynamics in the presence of controlled dissipation. These systems - for which the coherent dynamics are microscopically well understood and highly tuneable - are generally well-isolated from their environment. Coupling to the environment is then usually generated by light scattering, or induced in controlled forms via interatomic collistions, and large separations in frequency scales allow for closed microscopic equations to be derived for the system density operators under well-controlled approximations (e.g., many-body quantum master equations, as are familiar for single and few-particle systems in quantum optics). These can then be solved by generalising existing techniques (e.g., numerical methods based on tensor networks) to dissipative systems.

One important application is naturally in understanding how experimental imperfections affect dynamics in these platforms. But the level of control we have over the dissipation goes far beyond that, offering new tools for state preparation, as well as opening new elements of many-body dynamics far from equilibrium.

I will illustrate these opportunities with two recent examples of our theoretical research. Firstly, I will discuss schemes relevant for existing experiments with ultracold atoms, which would make use of control over collisions between atoms and control over dissipation in order to drive a system of many fermionic atoms dissipatively into spin-entangled states. Secondly, I will discuss our recent studies of transport processes in quantum gases that are driven by or strongly modified by dissipation.