Correlation engineering via non-local dissipation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how non-local dissipation can be engineered in cold atom systems to control and tailor the spread of correlations, including entanglement, with potential applications in quantum technologies.

Contribution

It introduces a method to use tunable non-local dissipation for designing specific correlation profiles in quantum many-body systems.

Findings

Dissipation can be harnessed to generate or destroy correlations.

Control over correlation profiles is achieved via spatially-invariant dissipation.

Entanglement can be preferentially generated at specific wavevectors.

Abstract

Controlling the spread of correlations in quantum many-body systems is a key challenge at the heart of quantum science and technology. Correlations are usually destroyed by dissipation arising from coupling between a system and its environment. Here, we show that dissipation can instead be used to engineer a wide variety of spatio-temporal correlation profiles in an easily tunable manner. We describe how dissipation with any translationally-invariant spatial profile can be realized in cold atoms trapped in an optical cavity. A uniform external field and the choice of spatial profile can be used to design when and how dissipation creates or destroys correlations. We demonstrate this control by preferentially generating entanglement at a desired wavevector. We thus establish non-local dissipation as a new route towards engineering the far-from-equilibrium dynamics of quantum information, with potential applications in quantum metrology, state preparation, and transport.