Probing the relaxation towards equilibrium in an isolated strongly correlated one-dimensional Bose gas

By S. Trotzky, Yu-Ao Chen, A. Flesch, Ian P. McCulloch, U. Schollwock, Jens Eisert, I. Bloch. Nature Physics, 2011

803 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The problem of how complex quantum systems eventually come to rest lies at the heart of statistical mechanics. The maximum-entropy principle describes which quantum states can be expected in equilibrium, but not how closed quantum many-body systems dynamically equilibrate. Here, we report the experimental observation of the non-equilibrium dynamics of a density wave of ultracold bosonic atoms in an optical lattice in the regime of strong correlations. Using an optical superlattice, we follow its dynamics in terms of quasi-local densities, currents and coherences—all showing a fast relaxation towards equilibrium values. Numerical calculations based on matrix-product states are in an excellent quantitative agreement with the experimental data. The system fulfills the promise of being a dynamical quantum simulator, in that the controlled dynamics runs for longer times than present classical algorithms can keep track of. How quantum many-body systems relax from an initial non-equilibrium state is one of the outstanding problems in quantum statistical physics. A study combining an experimental approach for monitoring the dynamics of strongly correlated cold atoms with theoretical analysis now provides quantitative insights into the problem.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ac5e540402ec80ede242d1531eaccbc776dd50f4

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Andrew J. Daley
2. I. Bloch
3. Mikhail D. Lukin
4. D. Abanin
5. Chaohong Lee
6. E. Demler
7. M. Batchelor
8. X. Guan

Citations in the corpus

• Quantum thermodynamics (2015, methodology): “It is fuelled by recent equilibration experiments [1] in cold atomic and other physical systems, the introduction of new numerical methods [2] and the dis-”
• Fermi gases in one dimension: From Bethe ansatz to experiments (2013, background): “…al., 2013) and fast relaxation towards equilibrium of quasi-local densities, currents and coherence in an isolated strongly correlated 1D Bose gas (Trotzky et al., 2012) give a precise understanding of quantum dynamics and correlations, including observation of the spin dynamics in 1D…”
• Quantum algorithms: an overview (2015, positive): “It is arguable that quantum simulations, in the sense of measuring the properties of a controllable quantum system, have already been performed which are beyond the reach of current classical simulation techniques [93].”
• Entanglement growth in quench dynamics with variable range interactions (2013, background): “Regimes of linear entanglement growth in time are thus important in demonstrating the power of a quantum simulator since realizing such regimes is a necessary requirement in order to observe dynamics that cannot be captured by state-of-the-art numerical techniques over long time scales [15,16].”
• Time-Dependent Impurity in Ultracold Fermions: Orthogonality Catastrophe and Beyond (2012, background): “thermalization in 1D systems [13,14], as well as interaction”