Tuning excitation transport in a dissipative Rydberg ring

TL;DR

This paper explores how excitation transport in a Rydberg atom ring can be precisely controlled by tuning interactions, synthetic flux, and dissipation, enabling potential applications like excitation switches.

Contribution

It introduces a method to manipulate excitation transport in a Rydberg ring using controlled dissipation and synthetic flux, demonstrating tunable chirality and transport pathways.

Findings

Transport direction can be controlled via flux and dissipation.

A regime where the system acts as an excitation switch is identified.

Chiral trajectories depend on dissipation and synthetic flux.

Abstract

We demonstrate the flexible tunability of excitation transport in Rydberg atoms, under the interplay of controlled dissipation and interaction-induced synthetic flux. Considering a minimum four-site setup -- a triangular configuration with an additional output site -- we study the transport of a single excitation, injected into a vertex of the triangle, through the structure. While the long-range dipole-dipole interactions between the Rydberg atoms lead to geometry-dependent Peierls phases in the hopping amplitudes of excitations, we further introduce on-site dissipation to a vertex of the triangle. As a result, both the chirality and destination of the transport can be manipulated through the flux and dissipation. In particular, we illustrate a parameter regime where our Rydberg-ring structure may serve as a switch for transporting the injected excitation through to the output site. The underlying mechanism is then analyzed by studying the chiral trajectory of the excitation and the time-dependent dissipation.