Gauge Violation Spectroscopy in Synthetic Gauge Theories

Recently synthetic gauge fields have been implemented on quantum simulators. Unlike the gauge fields in the real world, in synthetic gauge fields, the gauge charge can fluctuate and gauge invariance can be violated, which leading rich physics unexplored before. In this work, we propose the gauge violation spectroscopy as a useful experimentally accessible measurement in the synthetic gauge theories. We show that the gauge violation spectroscopy exhibits no dispersion. Using three models as examples, two of them can be exactly solved by bosonization, and one has been realized in experiment, we further demonstrate the gauge violation spectroscopy can be used to detect the confinement and deconfinement phases. In the confinement phase, it shows a delta function behavior, while in the deconfinement phase, it has a finite width.