Even the best AMO experiments have unavoidable couplings to their external environment and sources of technical noise. This is commonly thought of as a limitation for the generation of many-body correlations and entanglement because they are typically so fragile to decoherence and small perturbations. In recent years, though, physicists have identified that appropriately combining coherent interactions, external fields and dissipation can actually be used to dynamically prepare correlated many-body states of matter. Such driven-dissipative dynamics will thus likely have a large impact on the next-generation of quantum-enhanced devices.
One platform we are interested in are cold atoms confined within optical cavities. The atom-light interactions in optical cavities have been proposed to realize collective quantum spin models with tunable long-range interactions, which can feature exotic out-of-equilibrium phases of matter precluded from existence at equilibrium as well entangled states that can be used for quantum-enhanced sensing. However, they are also inherently open systems as intracavity photons leak out through the cavity mirrors on experimentally relevant time-scales. It has already been shown that this dissipation can lead to novel phenomena such as superradiance, whilst incoherently driving the system has been predicted to lead the realization of a new phase of matter termed a "time-crystal". The latter is motivation to better understand how interacting driven-dissipative systems can lead to states of matter which are intrinsically robust to perturbations, and thus ideal for quantum-enhanced sensing.
We are also interested in studying and engineering paradigmatic spin-boson models of quantum dissipation. These models can be related to dissipative phenomena in widespread areas such as condensed matter, quantum information and AMO physics. Technological advances in AMO platforms are leading to the enticing prospect of using quantum simulation to study such models in, e.g., trapped ions. Here, the tunable spin-boson coupling and laser cooling offer the prospect of studying systems with engineered baths and the investigation of dissipative-Dicke models.
From the perspective of a theoretician, modelling the the combination of interactions, external driving and dissipation in open systems is a generically difficult problem. This means that it presents a great opportunity for the development of theoretical tools, both numeric and analytic, which can describe such complex systems. Our group is interested in developing state-of-the-art stochastic phase-space methods and quantum trajectories to tackle these issues.
One platform we are interested in are cold atoms confined within optical cavities. The atom-light interactions in optical cavities have been proposed to realize collective quantum spin models with tunable long-range interactions, which can feature exotic out-of-equilibrium phases of matter precluded from existence at equilibrium as well entangled states that can be used for quantum-enhanced sensing. However, they are also inherently open systems as intracavity photons leak out through the cavity mirrors on experimentally relevant time-scales. It has already been shown that this dissipation can lead to novel phenomena such as superradiance, whilst incoherently driving the system has been predicted to lead the realization of a new phase of matter termed a "time-crystal". The latter is motivation to better understand how interacting driven-dissipative systems can lead to states of matter which are intrinsically robust to perturbations, and thus ideal for quantum-enhanced sensing.
We are also interested in studying and engineering paradigmatic spin-boson models of quantum dissipation. These models can be related to dissipative phenomena in widespread areas such as condensed matter, quantum information and AMO physics. Technological advances in AMO platforms are leading to the enticing prospect of using quantum simulation to study such models in, e.g., trapped ions. Here, the tunable spin-boson coupling and laser cooling offer the prospect of studying systems with engineered baths and the investigation of dissipative-Dicke models.
From the perspective of a theoretician, modelling the the combination of interactions, external driving and dissipation in open systems is a generically difficult problem. This means that it presents a great opportunity for the development of theoretical tools, both numeric and analytic, which can describe such complex systems. Our group is interested in developing state-of-the-art stochastic phase-space methods and quantum trajectories to tackle these issues.