Entanglement generation in weakly-driven arrays of multilevel atoms via dipolar interactions

We investigate the driven-dissipative dynamics of 1D and 2D arrays of multilevel atoms interacting via dipole-dipole interactions and trapped at subwavelength scales. Here we show that in the weakly driven low excitation regime, multilevel atoms, in contrast to two-level atoms, can become strongly entangled. The entanglement manifests as the growth of collective spin-waves in the ground state manifold, and survives even after turning off the drive. We propose to use the ~ 2.9~μm transition between ³ P₂ ↔ \, ³ D₃ in ⁸⁸Sr with 389~nm trapping light as an ideal experimental platform for validating our predictions and as a novel quantum interface for the exploration of complex many-body phenomena emerging from light-matter interactions.