Driven-dissipative many-body systems with mixed power-law interactions: Bistabilities and temperature-driven non-equilibrium phase transitions

TL;DR

This paper studies non-equilibrium phase transitions in driven-dissipative spin systems with mixed power-law interactions, revealing bistabilities and temperature-driven transitions, and provides a theoretical framework applicable to hot-vapour experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical approach to analyze non-equilibrium dynamics in systems with mixed power-law interactions, highlighting the role of temperature and particle motion.

Findings

Dynamical phase transitions depend on a slower decaying potential-core.

Finite temperature induces phase transitions in spin degrees of freedom.

High-temperature limit leads to mean-field behavior.

Abstract

We investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of a driven-dissipative spin ensemble with competing power-law interactions. We demonstrate that dynamical phase transitions as well as bistabilities can emerge for asymptotic van der Waals interactions, but critically rely on the presence of a slower decaying potential-core. Upon introducing random particle motion, we show that a finite gas temperature can drive a phase transition with regards to the spin degree of freedom and eventually leads to mean-field behaviour in the high-temperature limit. Our work reconciles contrasting observations of recent experiments with Rydberg atoms in the cold-gas and hot-vapour domain, and introduces an efficient theoretical framework in the latter regime.