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Anomalous decay of coherence in a dissipative many-body system

Nature Physics volume 16, pages 21–25 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Decoherence plays a major role in our current understanding of the conceptual foundations of quantum physics1. In many instances, decoherence is also a threat that must be countered (for instance, in quantum information processing or quantum technologies). While decoherence has been extensively studied for simple, well-isolated systems such as single atoms or ions2, much less is known for many-body systems where interparticle correlations and interactions can drastically alter the dissipative dynamics3,4,5,6. Here, we study experimentally the decoherence of a gas of strongly interacting bosons in an optical lattice exposed to near-resonant light and spontaneous emission. We observe an anomalous subdiffusion in momentum space, associated with a universal slowing down ∝1/t1/2 of the loss of spatial coherence. This algebraic decay reflects the emergence of slowly relaxing many-body states5, akin to the subradiant states of many excited emitters4. These results, supported by theoretical predictions, provide an important benchmark in the understanding of open many-body systems.

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Fig. 1: Observation of anomalous diffusion in momentum space.
Fig. 2: Decay of peak momentum amplitude and atom losses.
Fig. 3: Decay of nearest-neighbour coherence.
Fig. 4: Decay exponent α of the nearest-neighbour coherence Cnn.

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All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Information and Source Data.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge fruitful discussions with A. Georges, C. Kollath and J.-S. Bernier. We thank M. Brune, J. Dalibard, R. Lopes, S. Nascimbène and D. Poletti for careful reading of the manuscript. Laboratoire Kastler Brossel is a member of the DIM SIRTEQ of Région Ile-de-France.

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  1. Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Collège de France, ENS-PSL Research University, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Paris, France

    Raphaël Bouganne, Manel Bosch Aguilera, Alexis Ghermaoui, Jérôme Beugnon & Fabrice Gerbier

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  1. Raphaël Bouganne
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  2. Manel Bosch Aguilera
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Contributions

R.B., M.B.A. and A.G. performed the measurements under the supervision of J.B. and F.G. R.B. analysed the data. R.B. and F.G. performed analytical and numerical calculations. All authors participated in the interpretation and discussion of the experimental results and in the writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Fabrice Gerbier.

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Supplementary text, Figs. 1–10 and references.

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Bouganne, R., Bosch Aguilera, M., Ghermaoui, A. et al. Anomalous decay of coherence in a dissipative many-body system. Nat. Phys. 16, 21–25 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0678-2

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