Dissipatively Stabilizing Cavity Rydberg Polaritons using a Photon Source

In closed systems, the particle number is fixed and a particular many-body state can be prepared through traditional adiabatic state preparation schemes, as is the case for cold atomic lattice systems. However, in dissipative quantum systems – such as hybrid systems involving cavity photons and cold atoms – state preparation must follow a fundamentally different approach due to continuous particle loss. Theoretical proposals [1] have demonstrated that incompressible many-body states, such as Laughlin states, can be efficiently prepared when a many-body energy gap is combined with a non-reversible photon source. Here, we show our progress towards realizing a single photon drive using Rubidium 85 as a non-reversible cavity photon source within a Rubidium 87 experiment. We successfully implement a dual-Rb-species magneto-optical trap and present experimental results on isotope interactions, validating the feasibility of our proposed dissipative stabilization scheme. Through numerical simulations, we analyze the fidelity of this single-photon drive for different possible driving schemes. Our scheme, combined with the incompressibility of Laughlin states, will allow for dissipatively stabilized state preparation expanding on the work of superconducting systems [2], and creates the possibility for controllable and robust preparation of topologically ordered quantum states in photonic quantum matter.

[1] Umucalılar, Rifat Onur, Jonathan Simon and Iacopo Carusotto. “Autonomous stabilization of photonic Laughlin states through angular momentum potentials.” Physical Review A (2021)

[2] Ma, Ruichao, Brendan Saxberg, Clai Owens, Nelson Leung, Yao Lu, Jonathan Simon and David I. Schuster. “A dissipatively stabilized Mott insulator of photons.” Nature 566 (2018)