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Observation of prethermalization in long-range interacting spin chains

Although statistical mechanics describes thermal equilibrium states, these states may or may not emerge dynamically for a subsystem of an isolated quantum many-body system. For instance, quantum systems that are near-integrable usually fail to thermalize in an experimentally realistic time scale, an...

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Autores principales: Neyenhuis, Brian, Zhang, Jiehang, Hess, Paul W., Smith, Jacob, Lee, Aaron C., Richerme, Phil, Gong, Zhe-Xuan, Gorshkov, Alexey V., Monroe, Christopher
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5573308/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28875166
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1700672
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author Neyenhuis, Brian
Zhang, Jiehang
Hess, Paul W.
Smith, Jacob
Lee, Aaron C.
Richerme, Phil
Gong, Zhe-Xuan
Gorshkov, Alexey V.
Monroe, Christopher
author_facet Neyenhuis, Brian
Zhang, Jiehang
Hess, Paul W.
Smith, Jacob
Lee, Aaron C.
Richerme, Phil
Gong, Zhe-Xuan
Gorshkov, Alexey V.
Monroe, Christopher
author_sort Neyenhuis, Brian
collection PubMed
description Although statistical mechanics describes thermal equilibrium states, these states may or may not emerge dynamically for a subsystem of an isolated quantum many-body system. For instance, quantum systems that are near-integrable usually fail to thermalize in an experimentally realistic time scale, and instead relax to quasi-stationary prethermal states that can be described by statistical mechanics, when approximately conserved quantities are included in a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE). We experimentally study the relaxation dynamics of a chain of up to 22 spins evolving under a long-range transverse-field Ising Hamiltonian following a sudden quench. For sufficiently long-range interactions, the system relaxes to a new type of prethermal state that retains a strong memory of the initial conditions. However, the prethermal state in this case cannot be described by a standard GGE; it rather arises from an emergent double-well potential felt by the spin excitations. This result shows that prethermalization occurs in a broader context than previously thought, and reveals new challenges for a generic understanding of the thermalization of quantum systems, particularly in the presence of long-range interactions.
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spelling pubmed-55733082017-09-05 Observation of prethermalization in long-range interacting spin chains Neyenhuis, Brian Zhang, Jiehang Hess, Paul W. Smith, Jacob Lee, Aaron C. Richerme, Phil Gong, Zhe-Xuan Gorshkov, Alexey V. Monroe, Christopher Sci Adv Research Articles Although statistical mechanics describes thermal equilibrium states, these states may or may not emerge dynamically for a subsystem of an isolated quantum many-body system. For instance, quantum systems that are near-integrable usually fail to thermalize in an experimentally realistic time scale, and instead relax to quasi-stationary prethermal states that can be described by statistical mechanics, when approximately conserved quantities are included in a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE). We experimentally study the relaxation dynamics of a chain of up to 22 spins evolving under a long-range transverse-field Ising Hamiltonian following a sudden quench. For sufficiently long-range interactions, the system relaxes to a new type of prethermal state that retains a strong memory of the initial conditions. However, the prethermal state in this case cannot be described by a standard GGE; it rather arises from an emergent double-well potential felt by the spin excitations. This result shows that prethermalization occurs in a broader context than previously thought, and reveals new challenges for a generic understanding of the thermalization of quantum systems, particularly in the presence of long-range interactions. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2017-08-25 /pmc/articles/PMC5573308/ /pubmed/28875166 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1700672 Text en Copyright © 2017 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Neyenhuis, Brian
Zhang, Jiehang
Hess, Paul W.
Smith, Jacob
Lee, Aaron C.
Richerme, Phil
Gong, Zhe-Xuan
Gorshkov, Alexey V.
Monroe, Christopher
Observation of prethermalization in long-range interacting spin chains
title Observation of prethermalization in long-range interacting spin chains
title_full Observation of prethermalization in long-range interacting spin chains
title_fullStr Observation of prethermalization in long-range interacting spin chains
title_full_unstemmed Observation of prethermalization in long-range interacting spin chains
title_short Observation of prethermalization in long-range interacting spin chains
title_sort observation of prethermalization in long-range interacting spin chains
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5573308/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28875166
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1700672
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