English

Direct observation of dynamical quantum phase transitions in an interacting many-body system

Quantum Physics 2017-08-30 v1 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

Dynamical quantum phase transitions (DQPTs) extend the concept of phase transitions and thus universality to the non-equilibrium regime. In this letter, we investigate DQPTs in a string of ions simulating interacting transverse-field Ising models. We observe non-equilibrium dynamics induced by a quantum quench and show for strings of up to 10 ions the direct detection of DQPTs by measuring a quantity that becomes non-analytic in time in the thermodynamic limit. Moreover, we provide a link between DQPTs and the dynamics of other relevant quantities such as the magnetization, and we establish a connection between DQPTs and entanglement production.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.06902,
  title  = {Direct observation of dynamical quantum phase transitions in an interacting many-body system},
  author = {P. Jurcevic and H. Shen and P. Hauke and C. Maier and T. Brydges and C. Hempel and B. P. Lanyon and M. Heyl and R. Blatt and C. F. Roos},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.06902},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

8 pages, 6 figures