Engineering active motion in quantum matter

We introduce a framework for engineering active quantum matter that involves mimicking the role of self-propulsion through an external trapping potential that is moving along imposed trajectories traced by classical active dynamics. This approach in the presence of dissipation not only recovers essential dynamical behavior of classical activity, including the ballistic to diffusive crossover of its mean-square displacement, but also reveals additional features of activity that are of quantum origin. These quantum-active features are revealed in nondissipative systems, and manifest as novel exponents of the mean-square displacement at short timescales.