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Non-equilibrium dissipative dynamics and heating of cold atoms in optical lattices
Andrew Daley (University of Pittsburgh)
20.06.2012 at 10:15
A key challenge in current experiments with ultracold atoms is to produce low entropy manybody states with atoms in optical lattices. This is crucial to the realisation of many interesting quantum phases, as well as various dynamical phenomena. In this context, it is very important to characterise and control the competing heating processes present in these systems. Such processes arise from various sources, including spontaneous emissions and classical noise on the lattice potential (amplitude and position fluctuations). These processes give rise to non-equilibrium many-body dynamics, in which different manybody states exhibit different sensitivities and responses to a particular heating mechanism. In addition, thermalisation timescales for different excitations play an important role, and certain types of excitations cannot be properly thermalised on typical experimental timescales. I will discuss our recent work in this direction, considering the many-body dynamics of bosons in the presence of both spontaneous emissions and classical noise, and discussing how certain types of heating can be controlled by carefully designing the lattice setup.
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