Understanding symmetry-breaking states of materials is a major challenge in the modern physical sciences. Quantum atmosphere proposed recently sheds light on the hidden world of these symmetry broken patterns. But the requirements for exquisite sensitivity to the small shift and tremendous spatial resolution to local information pose huge obstacles to its experimental manifestation. In our experiment, we prepare time-reversal-symmetry conserved and broken quantum atmosphere of a single nuclear spin and successfully observe their symmetry properties. Our work proves in principle that finding symmetry patterns from quantum atmosphere is conceptually viable. It also opens up entirely new possibilities in the potential application of quantum sensing in material diagnosis.
@article{arxiv.2001.04047,
title = {Experimental sensing quantum atmosphere of a single spin},
author = {Kehang Zhu and Zhiping Yang and Qing-Dong Jiang and Zihua Chai and Zhijie Li and Zhiyuan Zhao and Ya Wang and Fazhan Shi and Chang-Kui Duan and Xing Rong and Jiangfeng Du},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.04047},
year = {2020}
}