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      Phase diagram of non-equilibrium phase transition in a strongly-interacting Rydberg atom vapour

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          Abstract

          Far-from equilibrium dynamics that lead to self-organization are highly relevant to complex dynamical systems not only in physics, but also in life-, earth-, and social sciences. It is challenging however to find systems with sufficiently controlled interactions that allow to model their emergent properties quantitatively. Here, we study a non-equilibrium phase transition and observe signatures of self-organized criticality in a dilute thermal vapour of atoms optically excited to strongly interacting Rydberg states. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) provides excellent control over the population dynamics and enables high-resolution probing of the driven-dissipative system, which also exhibits phase bistability. Increased sensitivity compared to previous work allows reconstruct the system's phase diagram including the observation of its critical point. We observe that interaction-induced energy shifts and enhanced decay only occur in one of the phases above a critical Rydberg population. This limits the application of generic mean-field models, however a modified, threshold-dependent approach is in qualitative agreement with experimental data. Near the transition threshold, we observe self-organization dynamics as small fluctuations are sufficient to induce a phase transition.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          28 June 2016
          2019-02-13
          Article
          1606.08791
          b39132c5-33ef-43ff-a9de-cd12ec03c1bb

          http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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          Custom metadata
          14 pages, 10 figures, comments welcome
          physics.atom-ph quant-ph

          Quantum physics & Field theory,Atomic & Molecular physics
          Quantum physics & Field theory, Atomic & Molecular physics

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