Dissipative time evolution of a chiral state after a quantum quench

TL;DR

This paper studies the non-equilibrium dynamics of fermionic atoms in an optical cavity after a sudden quench, revealing steady states with chiral currents and analyzing the effects of dissipation and cavity elimination.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the dissipative dynamics and steady states in a cavity QED system with fermionic atoms, highlighting deviations from adiabatic cavity elimination predictions.

Findings

Steady states can carry chiral currents after a quantum quench.

Dissipative attractor dynamics are characterized using exact diagonalization.

Properties of the steady state deviate from adiabatic elimination predictions.

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of fermionic atoms in a high-finesse optical resonator after a sudden switch on of the coupling between the atoms and the cavity. The atoms are additionally confined by optical lattices to a ladder geometry. The tunneling mechanism on a rung of a ladder is induced by a cavity assisted Raman process. At long times after the quantum quench the arising steady state can carry a chiral current. In this work we employ exact diagonalization techniques on small system sizes to study the dissipative attractor dynamics after the quench towards the steady state and deviations of the properties of the steady state from predictions obtained by adiabatically eliminating the cavity mode.