The effect of active photons on dynamical frustration in cavity QED

TL;DR

This paper investigates how active photons influence the non-equilibrium dynamics of disordered many-body spin-boson systems in cavity QED, revealing complex relaxation behaviors and potential applications in quantum information science.

Contribution

It introduces a study of photon-induced effects on dynamical frustration in disordered quantum systems using the DTWA method, highlighting new regimes of slow relaxation and glassy dynamics.

Findings

Photons can significantly alter the dynamical response of the system.

Resonant photons induce slow, glassy-like relaxation behaviors.

Disordered quantum systems with active photons exhibit diverse non-equilibrium responses.

Abstract

We study the far-from-equilibrium dynamical regimes of a many-body spin boson model with disordered couplings relevant for cavity QED and trapped ions experiments, using the discrete truncated Wigner approximation (DTWA). We focus on the dynamics of spin observables upon varying the disorder strength and the frequency of the photons, finding that the latter can considerably alter the structure of the system's dynamical responses. When the photons evolve at a similar rate as the spins, they can induce qualitatively distinct frustrated dynamics characterized by either logarithmic or algebraically slow relaxation. The latter illustrates resilience of glassy-like dynamics in the presence of active photonic degrees of freedom, suggesting that disordered quantum many body systems with resonant photons or phonons can display a rich diagram of non-equilibrium responses, with near future applications for quantum information science.