Controlling Markovianity with Chiral Giant Atoms

Giant artificial atoms are promising and flexible building blocks for the implementation of analog quantum simulators. They are realized via a multilocal pattern of couplings of two-level systems to a waveguide, or to a two-dimensional photonic bath. A hallmark of giant-atom physics is their non-Markovian character in the form of self-coherent feedback, leading, e.g., to nonexponential atomic decay. The timescale of their non-Markovianity is essentially given by the time delay proportional to the distance between the various coupling points. In parallel, with the state-of-the-art experimental setups, it is possible to engineer complex phases in the atom-light couplings. Such phases simulate an artificial magnetic field, yielding a chiral behavior of the atom-light system. Here, we report a surprising connection between these two seemingly unrelated features of giant atoms, showing that the chirality of a giant atom controls its Markovianity. In particular, by adjusting the couplings’ phases, a giant atom can, counterintuitively, enter an exact Markovian regime, irrespectively of any inherent time delay. We illustrate this mechanism as an interference process and via a collision model picture. Our findings significantly advance the understanding of giant atom physics, and open new avenues for the control of quantum nanophotonic networks.