QUROPE Quantum Information Processing and Communication in Europe

We discuss the preparation of many-body states of cold fermionic atoms in an optical lattice via controlled dissipative processes induced by coupling the system to a reservoir. Based on a mechanism combining Pauli blocking and phase locking between adjacent sites, we construct complete sets of jump operators describing coupling to a reservoir that leads to dissipative preparation of pairing states for fermions with various symmetries in the absence of direct inter-particle interactions. We discuss the uniqueness of these states, and demonstrate it with small-scale numerical simulations. In the late-time dissipative dynamics, we identify a 'dissipative gap' that persists in the thermodynamic limit. This gap implies exponential convergence of all many-body observables to their steady-state values. We then investigate how these pairing states can be used as a starting point for the preparation of the ground state of the Fermi–Hubbard Hamiltonian via an adiabatic state preparation process also involving the parent Hamiltonian of the pairing state. We also provide a proof-of-principle example for implementing these dissipative processes and the parent Hamiltonians of the pairing states, based on 171Yb atoms in optical lattice potentials.