The effect of active photons on dynamical frustration in cavity QED

Abstract: We study the far-from-equilibrium dynamical regimes of a many-body spin boson model with disordered couplings relevant for cavity QED and trapped ions experiments, using the discrete truncated Wigner approximation (DTWA). We focus on the dynamics of spin observables upon varying the disorder strength and the frequency of the photons, finding that the latter can considerably alter the structure of the system's dynamical responses. When the photons evolve at a similar rate as the spins, they can induce qualitatively distinct frustrated dynamics characterized by either logarithmic or algebraically slow relaxation. The latter illustrates resilience of glassy-like dynamics in the presence of active photonic degrees of freedom, suggesting that disordered quantum many body systems with resonant photons or phonons can display a rich diagram of non-equilibrium responses, with near future applications for quantum information science.