Abstract
We study an atom-cavity hybrid system where fermionic atoms in a one-dimensional lattice are subject to a cavity-induced dynamic gauge potential. The gauge coupling leads to highly degenerate steady states in which the fermions accumulate to one edge of the lattice under an open boundary condition. Such a phenomenon originates from the many-body Liouvillian superoperator of the system, which, being intrinsically non-Hermitian, is unstable against boundary perturbations and manifests the non-Hermitian skin effect. Contrary to the single-body case, the steady state of a multiatom system is approached much slower under the open boundary condition, as the long-time damping of the cavity mode exhibits distinct rates at different times. This stagewise slowdown is attributed to the competition between light-assisted hopping and the dynamic gauge coupling, which significantly reduces the steady-state degeneracy under the open boundary condition, as distinct hosts of quasisteady states dominate the dynamics at different timescales.
- Received 16 May 2023
- Revised 17 August 2023
- Accepted 23 August 2023
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.033173
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society