Emergent phases and novel critical behavior in a non-Markovian open quantum system

Abstract: Open quantum systems exhibit a range of novel out-of-equilibrium behavior due to the interplay between coherent quantum dynamics and dissipation. Of particular interest in these systems are driven, dissipative transitions, the emergence of dynamical phases with novel broken symmetries, and critical behavior that lies beyond the conventional paradigms of Landau-Ginzburg phenomenology. Here, we consider a parametrically driven two-mode system in the presence of non-Markovian system-reservoir interactions. We show that non-Markovianity modifies the phase diagram of this system resulting in the emergence of a novel broken symmetry phase in a new universality class that has no counterpart in a Markovian or equilibrium system. Such reservoir-engineered dynamical phases can potentially shed light on universal aspects of dynamical phase transitions in a wide range of non-equilibrium systems, and aid in the development of techniques for the robust generation of entanglement and quantum correlations at finite temperatures with potential applications to quantum metrology.