Classicality and Quantumness in Glassy Open Quantum Dynamics

For classical and quantum physical systems, interactions with external environments are usually detrimental to any information encoded within their configurations, with systems found at long times in stable phases independent from their initial conditions. This forms a critical issue for quantum technology applications, with quantum information unavoidably erased overtime in experimental platforms. In classical soft matter featuring glassy dynamics, however, relaxation towards a stable phase can be significantly delayed, which enables a part of the initially encoded information to survive virtually unaffected for a long time. This project will explore open quantum generalisations of classical kinetically constrained models that are known to feature such glassy dynamics, with the goal to discover new physical systems that can store not only classical but also more fragile quantum information.
The initial stage will consist of analytical studies of small systems. Those results will then guide adaptations of well-established exact and systematically improvable numerical techniques, for efficient simulations of larger systems. Experimentally feasible setups could become the focus in later years, with outcomes potentially paving a way for a novel type of quantum memories for quantum computing applications.