Recent experimental developments in diverse areas -ranging from cold atomic gases to light-driven semiconductors to microcavity arrays -move systems into the focus which are located on the interface of quantum optics, many-body physics and statistical mechanics. They share in common that coherent and driven-dissipative quantum dynamics occur on an equal footing, creating genuine non-equilibrium scenarios without immediate counterpart in equilibrium condensed matter physics. This concerns both their non-thermal stationary states, as well as their many-body time evolution. It is a challenge to theory to identify novel instances of universal emergent macroscopic phenomena, which are tied unambiguously and in an observable way to the microscopic drive conditions. In this review, we discuss some recent results in this direction. Moreover, we provide a systematic introduction to the open system Keldysh functional integral approach, which is the proper technical tool to accomplish a merger of quantum optics and many-body physics, and leverages the power of modern quantum field theory to driven open quantum systems. CONTENTS

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In the context of ultracold atoms in multimode optical cavities, the appearance of a quantum-critical glass phase of atomic spins has been predicted recently. Due to the long-range nature of the cavity-mediated interactions, but also the presence of a driving laser and dissipative processes such as cavity photon loss, the quantum optical realization of glassy physics has no analog in condensed matter, and could evolve into a "cavity glass microscope" for frustrated quantum systems out-of-equilibrium. Here we develop the non-equilibrium theory of the multimode Dicke model with quenched disorder and Markovian dissipation. Using a unified Keldysh path integral approach, we show that the defining features of a low temperature glass, representing a critical phase of matter with algebraically decaying temporal correlation functions, are seen to be robust against the presence of dissipation due to cavity loss. The universality class however is modified due to the Markovian bath. The presence of strong disorder leads to an enhanced equilibration of atomic and photonic degrees of freedom, including the emergence of a common low-frequency effective temperature. The imprint of the atomic spin glass physics onto a "photon glass" makes it possible to detect the glass state by standard experimental techniques of quantum optics. We provide an unambiguous characterization of the superradiant and glassy phases in terms of fluorescence spectroscopy, homodyne detection, and the temporal photon correlation function g (2) (τ).

We consider the time-reversal-invariant Hofstadter-Hubbard model which can be realized in cold atom experiments. In these experiments, an additional staggered potential and an artificial Rashbatype spin-orbit coupling are available. Without interactions, the system exhibits various phases such as topological and normal insulator, metal as well as semi-metal phases with two or even more Dirac cones. Using a combination of real-space dynamical mean-field theory and analytical techniques, we discuss the effect of on-site interactions and determine the corresponding phase diagram. In particular, we investigate the semi-metal to antiferromagnetic insulator transition and the stability of different topological insulator phases in the presence of strong interactions. We compute spectral functions which allow us to study the edge states of the strongly correlated topological phases.

Stochastic processes with absorbing states feature remarkable examples of non-equilibrium universal phenomena. While a broad understanding has been progressively established in the classical regime, relatively little is known about the behavior of these non-equilibrium systems in the presence of quantum fluctuations. Here we theoretically address such a scenario in an open quantum spin model which in its classical limit undergoes a directed percolation phase transition. By mapping the problem to a non-equilibrium field theory, we show that the introduction of quantum fluctuations stemming from coherent, rather than statistical, spin-flips alters the nature of the transition such that it becomes first-order. In the intermediate regime, where classical and quantum dynamics compete on equal terms, we highlight the presence of a bicritical point with universal features different from the directed percolation class in low dimension. We finally propose how this physics could be explored within gases of interacting atoms excited to Rydberg states.