Non-equilibrium fluctuations and metastability arising from non-additive interactions in dissipative multi-component Rydberg gases

Abstract

We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of dissipative gases of atoms excited to two or more highlying Rydberg states. This situation bears interesting similarities to classical binary (in general p-ary) mixtures of particles. The effective forces between the components are determined by the inter-level and intra-level interactions of Rydberg atoms. These systems permit to explore new parameter regimes which are physically inaccessible in a classical setting, for example one in which the mixtures exhibit non-additive interactions. In this situation the out-of-equilibrium evolution is characterized by the formation of metastable domains that reach partial equilibration long before the attainment of stationarity. In experimental settings with mesoscopic sizes, this collective behavior may in fact take the appearance of dynamic symmetry breaking.

Physical swap dynamics, shortcuts to relaxation, and entropy production in dissipative Rydberg gases

“…When the decay rate κ is zero, the (uncorrelated) stationary state is such that each atom can be in any energy level |0 , |1 , |2 with the same probability [21]. As the rate between any two configurations connected by a transition is the same in either direction, see Eqs.…”

“…In this stronglydissipative limit, coherent superpositions of local atomic states dephase exponentially fast, allowing for a description of the dynamics that only includes (slow-evolving) diagonal elements of the density matrix on timescales larger than γ −1 s (for the atomic level with the smallest dephasing rate γ s in the system). An analogous approach has been previously used to explore multi-component Rydberg gases in the absence of exchange processes and decay [21], and also to study one-component systems [23,[35][36][37][38][39].…”

“…In the domain of cold atomic gases Rydberg atoms have emerged as a platform [14][15][16] for studying collective dynamical behaviors [17][18][19][20][21][22] which are closely linked to that of glasses [23][24][25]. The physics of interacting Rydberg atoms is governed by blockade effects [26,27] analogous to the excluded volume interactions underlying the dynamics of glass-forming liquids and jammed systems of hard objects [1,2,28].…”

Predicting acoustic relaxation absorption in gas mixtures for extraction of composition relaxation contributions

“…The molecular energy transfer processes in which the molecules change states upon collisions can be described analytically based on quantum mechanical theory. [30][31][32][33] During the bimolecular collision of gas species a with species b, transition probability P ia−ja…”

“…The V-V process leads to the energy transition of different vibrational modes and involves with simultaneous changes of vibrational states in both of the collision molecules. The molecular energy transfer processes in which the molecules change states upon collisions can be described analytically based on quantum mechanical theory [30][31][32][33]. During the bimolecular collision of gas species a with species b, transition probability P i a −j a i b −j b (a, b) that a pair of molecules originally with vibrational states i a and i b will arrive at vibrational states j a and j b after collision, is derived from the Tanczos equation [9],…”