Dissipation-assisted prethermalization in long-range interacting atomic ensembles

TL;DR

This paper theoretically explores how dissipation influences the prethermalization process in long-range interacting atomic ensembles driven by a laser within a cavity, revealing that dissipation can significantly prolong prethermalization timescales.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of dissipation-assisted prethermalization, showing how dissipation extends the prethermalization period beyond coherent dynamics in long-range atomic systems.

Findings

Dissipation prolongs prethermalization by orders of magnitude.

Momentum-position correlations persist longer than mean-field predictions.

Cooling into the self-organized phase may require longer times than typical experimental durations.

Abstract

We theoretically characterize the semiclassical dynamics of an ensemble of atoms after a sudden quench across a driven-dissipative second-order phase transition. The atoms are driven by a laser and interact via conservative and dissipative long-range forces mediated by the photons of a single-mode cavity. These forces can cool the motion and, above a threshold value of the laser intensity, induce spatial ordering. We show that the relaxation dynamics following the quench exhibits a long prethermalizing behaviour which is first dominated by coherent long-range forces, and then by their interplay with dissipation. Remarkably, dissipation-assisted prethermalization is orders of magnitude longer than prethermalization due to the coherent dynamics. We show that it is associated with the creation of momentum-position correlations, which remain nonzero for even longer times than mean-field predicts. This implies that cavity cooling of an atomic ensemble into the selforganized phase can require longer time scales than the typical experimental duration. In general, these results demonstrate that noise and dissipation can substantially slow down the onset of thermalization in long-range interacting many-body systems.