Dimerization of many-body subradiant states in waveguide quantum electrodynamics

TL;DR

This paper investigates many-body subradiant states in waveguide quantum electrodynamics, revealing their structure, entanglement properties, and the conditions under which they break down or disappear as excitation fill increases.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized many-body entanglement entropy and uncovers the transition from fermionized to dimerized states at a critical fill factor.

Findings

Breakdown of fermionized subradiant states with increasing fill factor

Emergence of short-range dimerized correlations at critical fill

Disappearance of subradiant states for fill factor above 1/2

Abstract

We study theoretically subradiant states in the array of atoms coupled to photons propagating in a one-dimensional waveguide focusing on the strongly interacting many-body regime with large excitation fill factor $f$. We introduce a generalized many-body entropy of entanglement based on exact numerical diagonalization followed by a high-order singular value decomposition. This approach has allowed us to visualize and understand the structure of a many-body quantum state. We reveal the breakdown of fermionized subradiant states with increase of $f$ with emergence of short-ranged dimerized antiferromagnetic correlations at the critical point $f=1/2$ and the complete disappearance of subradiant states at $f>1/2$.