Diehl, Sebastian and Tomadin, Andrea and Micheli, Andrea and Fazio, Rosario and Zoller, Peter (2010) Dynamical phase transitions and instabilities in open atomic many-body systems. Physical review letters, 105 (1). ISSN 0031-9007
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
We discuss an open driven-dissipative many-body system, in which the competition of unitary Hamiltonian and dissipative Liouvillian dynamics leads to a nonequilibrium phase transition. It shares features of a quantum phase transition in that it is interaction driven, and of a classical phase transition, in that the ordered phase is continuously connected to a thermal state. We characterize the phase diagram and the critical behavior at the phase transition approached as a function of time. We find a novel fluctuation induced dynamical instability, which occurs at long wavelength as a consequence of a subtle dissipative renormalization effect on the speed of sound.