Ergodicity breaking from Rydberg clusters in a driven-dissipative many-body system

TL;DR

This paper presents experimental evidence of ergodicity breaking in driven-dissipative Rydberg atomic gases, showing a transition to non-ergodic dynamics characterized by long-time phase oscillations and Rydberg excitation clusters.

Contribution

It demonstrates the emergence of ergodicity breaking and limit cycle phases in Rydberg many-body systems under driven-dissipative conditions, verified by tuning atomic densities.

Findings

Observation of long-time phase oscillations indicating ergodicity breaking

Formation of Rydberg excitation clusters in limit cycle phases

Verification of many-body interaction effects through density tuning

Abstract

It is challenging to probe ergodicity breaking trends of a quantum many-body system when dissipation inevitably damages quantum coherence originated from coherent coupling and dispersive two-body interactions. Rydberg atoms provide a test bed to detect emergent exotic many-body phases and non-ergodic dynamics where the strong Rydberg atom interaction competes with and overtakes dissipative effects even at room temperature. Here we report experimental evidence of a transition from ergodic towards ergodic breaking dynamics in driven-dissipative Rydberg atomic gases. The broken ergodicity is featured by the long-time phase oscillation, which is attributed from the formation of Rydberg excitation clusters in limit cycle phases. The broken symmetry in the limit cycle is a direct manifestation of many-body interactions, which is verified by tuning atomic densities in our experiment. The reported result reveals that Rydberg many-body systems are a promising candidate to probe ergodicity breaking dynamics, such as limit cycles, and enable the benchmark of non-equilibrium phase transition.