Collective dissipation engineering of interacting Rydberg atoms

Abstract

Engineered dissipation is emerging as an alternative tool for quantum state control, enabling high-fidelity preparation, transfer and stabilization, and access to novel phase transitions. We realize a tunable, state-resolved laser-induced loss channel for individual Rydberg atoms, in both non-interacting and strongly correlated settings. This capability allows us to reveal interaction-driven shifts of the exceptional point separating quantum Zeno and anti-Zeno regimes, and to demonstrate interaction-enhanced decay. By exploiting interaction-dependent energy level shifts, we observe a configuration-selective two-body Zeno effect that freezes target spin states. We theoretically show that when this mechanism is extended to many-body chains it allows for the dissipative distillation of unwanted spin configurations. These experimental studies establish a versatile approach for exploring strongly interacting, open quantum spin systems, and opens possible new routines for dissipative preparation of correlated quantum states in Rydberg atom arrays.