Quantum Contact Processes on a Topological Lattice

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 3 Apr 2026] Quantum Contact Processes on a Topological Lattice Julius Bohm, Richard Schmidt, Michael Fleischhauer, Daniel Brady Contact processes play an important role in classical non-equilibrium dynamics, describing the spreading of diseases, the dynamics of earthquakes and forest fires, and the distribution of information through the internet. Here we show that their quantum counterpart, where the spreading occurs through coherent couplings, displays even richer dynamics and offers new means of control. A quantum contact process on a topologically non-trivial lattice can be confined to a protected subspace corresponding to either a single site or a fully excited lattice. Furthermore, excitation spreading can be controlled to occur in quantized steps and on demand when employing topological pumps. We show that the many-body dynamics of excited domains can be mapped to an effective single-particle model, which also determines the topological properties. Throughout this work, we consider a specific type of contact process corresponding to coherent Rydberg facilitation in a tweezer array of trapped atoms in a one-dimensional lattice. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.03184 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.03184v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.03184 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Julius Bohm [view email] [v1] Fri, 3 Apr 2026 16:59:04 UTC (2,441 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)