Dissipation as a Resource: Synchronization, Coherence Recovery, and Chaos Control

Abstract: Dissipation is commonly regarded as an obstacle to quantum control, as it induces decoherence and irreversibility. Here we demonstrate that dissipation can instead be exploited as a resource to reshape the dynamics of interacting quantum systems. Using an experimentally realizable Bose-Josephson junction containing two bosonic species, we demonstrate that dissipation enables distinct dynamical behaviors: synchronized phase-locked oscillations, transient chaos with long-time coherence recovery, and steady-state chaos. The emergence of each behavior is determined by experimentally tunable parameters. At weak interactions, the two components synchronize despite dissipation, exhibiting long-lived coherent oscillations reminiscent of a boundary time crystal. Stronger interactions induce a dissipative phase transition into a self-trapped regime accompanied by chaotic dynamics. Remarkably, dissipation regulates the lifetime of chaos and enables the recovery of coherence at long times. By introducing a controlled tilt between the wells, transient chaos can be converted into persistent steady-state chaos. We further show that standard spectral diagnostics fail to distinguish between the two chaotic regimes, revealing that spectral statistics primarily reflect short-time instability. These results establish dissipation as a powerful tool for engineering dynamical phases, restoring quantum coherence, and controlling the duration of chaotic behavior and information scrambling.