Emergence of spatially extended pair coherence through incoherent local environmental coupling

We demonstrate that quantum coherence can be generated by the interplay of coupling to an incoherent environment and kinetic processes. This joint effect even occurs in a repulsively interacting fermionic system initially prepared in an incoherent Mott insulating state. In this case, coupling a dissipative noise field to the local spin density produces coherent pairs of fermions. The generated pair coherence, while metastable, is long lived and spatially extended. This conceptually surprising approach provides a path towards a better control of quantum many-body correlations.