Quench dynamics of a dissipative Rydberg gas in the classical and quantum regime

TL;DR

This paper explores the non-equilibrium dynamics of a dissipative Rydberg gas after a sudden quench, comparing classical and quantum behaviors, and provides analytical insights into the excitation growth and phase transition phenomena.

Contribution

It applies a classical phase transformation model to Rydberg gases and offers an approximate analytical solution for quantum quench dynamics, bridging classical and quantum regimes.

Findings

Different excitation growth behaviors in classical and quantum regimes

Analytic understanding of post-quench dynamics near phase transitions

Approximate solutions for quantum regime dynamics

Abstract

Understanding the non-equilibrium behavior of quantum systems is a major goal of contemporary physics. Much research is currently focused on the dynamics of many-body systems in low-dimensional lattices following a quench, i.e., a sudden change of parameters. Already such a simple setting poses substantial theoretical challenges for the investigation of the real-time post-quench quantum dynamics. In classical many-body systems the Kolmogorov-Mehl-Johnson-Avrami model describes the phase transformation kinetics of a system that is quenched across a first order phase transition. Here we show that a similar approach can be applied for shedding light on the quench dynamics of an interacting gas of Rydberg atoms, which has become an important experimental platform for the investigation of quantum non-equilibrium effects. We are able to gain an analytic understanding of the time-evolution following a sudden quench from an initial state devoid of Rydberg atoms and identify strikingly different behaviors of the excitation growth in the classical and quantum regimes. Our approach allows us to describe quenches near a non-equilibrium phase transition and provides an approximate analytic solution deep in the quantum domain.