We investigate the possibility of a bistable phase in an open many-body system. To this end we discuss the microscopic dynamics of a continuously off-resonantly driven Rydberg lattice gas in the regime of strong decoherence. Our experimental results reveal a prolongation of the temporal correlations exceeding the lifetime of a single Rydberg excitation and show strong evidence for the formation of finite-sized Rydberg excitation clusters in the steady state. We simulate the dynamics of the system using a simplified and a full many-body rate-equation model. The results are compatible with the formation of metastable states associated with a bimodal counting distribution as well as dynamic hysteresis. Yet, a scaling analysis reveals that the correlation times remain finite for all relevant system parameters, which suggests a formation of many small Rydberg clusters and finite correlation lengths of Rydberg excitations. These results constitute strong evidence against the presence of a global bistable phase previously suggested to exist in this system.

We suggest a scheme for the preparation of highly correlated Laughlin (LN) states in the presence of synthetic gauge fields, realizing an analogue of the fractional quantum Hall effect in photonic or atomic systems of interacting bosons. It is based on the idea of growing such states by adding weakly interacting composite fermions (CF) along with magnetic flux quanta one-by-one. The topologically protected Thouless pump ("Laughlin's argument") is used to create two localized flux quanta and the resulting hole excitation is subsequently filled by a single boson, which, together with one of the flux quanta forms a CF. Using our protocol, filling 1/2 LN states can be grown with particle number N increasing linearly in time and strongly suppressed number fluctuations. To demonstrate the feasibility of our scheme, we consider two-dimensional (2D) lattices subject to effective magnetic fields and strong on-site interactions. We present numerical simulations of small lattice systems and discuss also the influence of losses. Introduction In recent years topological states of matter [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] have attracted a great deal of interest, partly due to their astonishing physical properties (like fractional charge and statistics) but also because of their potential practical relevance for quantum computation [9,10]. While these exotic phases of matter were first explored in the context of the quantum Hall effect of electrons subject to strong magnetic fields [11,12], there has been considerable progress recently towards their realization in cold-atom [13][14][15][16] as well as photonic [17][18][19][20][21][22][23] systems. A particularly attractive feature of such quantum Hall simulators are the comparatively large intrinsic length scales which allow coherent preparation, manipulation and spatially resolved detection of exotic many-body phases and their excitations.

Edge modes in topological insulators are known to be robust against defects. We investigate if this also holds true when the defect is not static, but varies in time. We study the influence of defects with timedependent coupling on the robustness of the transport along the edge in a Floquet system of helically curved waveguides. Waveguide arrays are fabricated via direct laser writing in a negative tone photoresist. We find that single dynamic defects do not destroy the chiral edge current, even when the temporal modulation is strong. Quantitative numerical simulation of the intensity in the bulk and edge waveguides confirms our observation.

Spin lattice models play central role in the studies of quantum magnetism and non-equilibrium dynamics of spin excitations -magnons. We show that a spin lattice with strong nearest-neighbor interactions and tunable long-range hopping of excitations can be realized by a regular array of laser driven atoms, with an excited Rydberg state representing the spin-up state and a Rydbergdressed ground state corresponding to the spin-down state. We find exotic interaction-bound states of magnons that propagate in the lattice via the combination of resonant two-site hopping and nonresonant second-order hopping processes. Arrays of trapped Rydberg-dressed atoms can thus serve as a flexible platform to simulate and study fundamental few-body dynamics in spin lattices. arXiv:1712.04713v1 [physics.atom-ph] 13 Dec 2017 1 J 1 J J U 2 1 H (2) J = xy−x

When atomic gases are laser driven to Rydberg states in an off resonant way, a single Rydberg atom may enhance the excitation rate of surrounding atoms. This leads to a facilitated excitation referred to as Rydberg anti-blockade. In the usual facilitation scenario, the detuning of the laser from resonance compensates the interaction shift. Here, we discuss a different excitation mechanism, which we call anomalous facilitation. This occurs on the "wrong side" of the resonance and originates from inhomogeneous broadening. The anomalous facilitation may be seen in experiments of attractively interacting atoms on the blue detuned side, where facilitation is not expected to appear.

The bulk-edge correspondence guarantees that the interface between two topologically distinct insulators supports at least one topological edge state that is robust against static perturbations. Here, we address the question of how dynamic perturbations of the interface affect the robustness of edge states. We illuminate the limits of topological protection for Floquet systems in the special case of a static bulk. We use two independent dynamic quantum simulators based on coupled plasmonic and dielectric photonic waveguides to implement the topological Su-Schriefer-Heeger model with convenient control of the full space- and time-dependence of the Hamiltonian. Local time-periodic driving of the interface does not change the topological character of the system but nonetheless leads to dramatic changes of the edge state, which becomes rapidly depopulated in a certain frequency window. A theoretical Floquet analysis shows that the coupling of Floquet replicas to the bulk bands is responsible for this effect. Additionally, we determine the depopulation rate of the edge state and compare it to numerical simulations.

We discuss a protocol for growing states with topological order in interacting many-body systems using a sequence of flux quanta and particle insertion. We first consider a simple toy model, the superlattice Bose Hubbard model, to explain all required ingredients. Our protocol is then applied to fractional quantum Hall systems in both, continuum and lattice. We investigate in particular how the fidelity, with which a topologically ordered state can be grown, scales with increasing particle number N . For small systems exact diagonalization methods are used. To treat large systems with many particles, we introduce an effective model based on the composite fermion description of the fractional quantum Hall effect. This model also allows to take into account the effects of dispersive bands and edges in the system, which will be discussed in detail.

Strong, long-range interactions between atoms in high-lying Rydberg states can suppress multiple Rydberg excitations within a micron-sized trapping volume and yield sizable Rydberg level shifts at larger distances. Ensembles of atoms in optical microtraps then form Rydberg superatoms with collectively enhanced transition rates to the singly excited state. These superatoms can represent mesoscopic, strongly interacting spins. We study a regular array of such effective spins driven by a laser field tuned to compensate the interaction-induced level shifts between neighboring superatoms. During the initial transient, a few excited superatoms seed a cascade of resonantly facilitated excitation of large clusters of superatoms. Due to spontaneous decay, the system then relaxes to the steady state having nearly universal Rydberg excitation density 2 3 R r = . This state is characterized by highly non-trivial equilibrium dynamics of quasi-particles-excitation holes in the lattice of Rydberg excited superatoms. We derive an effective many-body model that accounts for hole mobility as well as continuous creation and annihilation of holes upon collisions with each other. We find that holes exhibit a nearly incompressible liquid phase with highly sub-Poissonian number statistics and finiterange density-density correlations.