Simulating the real-time evolution of quantum spin systems far out of equilibrium poses a major theoretical challenge, especially in more than one dimension.We experimentally explore quench dynamics in a two-dimensional Ising spin system with transverse and longitudinal fields.We realize the system with a near unit-occupancy atomic array of over 200 atoms obtained by loading a spin-polarized band insulator of fermionic lithium into an optical lattice and induce short-range interactions by direct excitation to a lowlying Rydberg state.Using site-resolved microscopy, we probe antiferromagnetic correlations in the system after a sudden quench from a paramagnetic state and compare our measurements to numerical calculations using state-of-the-art techniques.We achieve many-body states with longer-range antiferromagnetic correlations by implementing a near-adiabatic quench of the longitudinal field and study the buildup of correlations as we vary the rate with which we change the field.
Simulating the real-time evolution of quantum spin systems far out of equilibrium poses a major theoretical challenge, especially in more than one dimension.We experimentally explore quench dynamics in a two-dimensional Ising spin system with transverse and longitudinal fields.We realize the system with a near unit-occupancy atomic array of over 200 atoms obtained by loading a spin-polarized band insulator of fermionic lithium into an optical lattice and induce short-range interactions by direct excitation to a lowlying Rydberg state.Using site-resolved microscopy, we probe antiferromagnetic correlations in the system after a sudden quench from a paramagnetic state and compare our measurements to numerical calculations using state-of-the-art techniques.We achieve many-body states with longer-range antiferromagnetic correlations by implementing a near-adiabatic quench of the longitudinal field and study the buildup of correlations as we vary the rate with which we change the field.
Simulating the real-time evolution of quantum spin systems far out of equilibrium poses a major theoretical challenge, especially in more than one dimension.We experimentally explore quench dynamics in a two-dimensional Ising spin system with transverse and longitudinal fields.We realize the system with a near unit-occupancy atomic array of over 200 atoms obtained by loading a spin-polarized band insulator of fermionic lithium into an optical lattice and induce short-range interactions by direct excitation to a lowlying Rydberg state.Using site-resolved microscopy, we probe antiferromagnetic correlations in the system after a sudden quench from a paramagnetic state and compare our measurements to numerical calculations using state-of-the-art techniques.We achieve many-body states with longer-range antiferromagnetic correlations by implementing a near-adiabatic quench of the longitudinal field and study the buildup of correlations as we vary the rate with which we change the field.
We explore the dynamics of artificial one-and two-dimensional Ising-like quantum antiferromagnets with different lattice geometries by using a Rydberg quantum simulator of up to 36 spins in which we dynamically tune the parameters of the Hamiltonian.We observe, in a region in parameter space, the onset of antiferromagnetic (AF) ordering, albeit with only finite-range correlations.We study systematically the influence of the ramp speeds on the correlations and their growth in time.We observe a delay in their buildup associated to the finite speed of propagation of correlations in a system with short-range interactions.We obtain a good agreement between experimental data and numerical simulations, taking into account experimental imperfections measured at the single-particle level.Finally, we develop an analytical model, based on a short-time expansion of the evolution operator, which captures the observed spatial structure of the correlations, and their buildup in time.
We investigate the dynamical spreading of spatial correlations after a quantum quench starting from a magnetically disordered state in the transverse-field Ising model at one (1D) and two spatial dimensions (2D). We analyze specifically the longitudinal and transverse spin-spin correlation functions at equal time with use of several methods. From the comparison of the results in 1D obtained by the linear spin-wave approximation (LSWA) and those obtained by the rigorous analytical approach, we show that the LSWA can asymptotically reproduce the exact group velocity in the limit of strong transverse fields while it fails to capture the detailed time dependence of the correlation functions. By applying the LSWA to the 2D case, in which the rigorous analytical approach is unavailable, we estimate the propagation velocity to be $Ja/(2\ensuremath{\hbar})$ at the strong-field limit, where J is the Ising interaction and a is the lattice spacing. We also utilize the tensor-network method based on the projected-entangled pair states for 2D and quantitatively compute the time evolution of the correlation functions for a relatively short time. Our findings provide useful benchmarks for quantum simulation experiments of correlation spreading and theoretical refinement of the Lieb-Robinson bound in the future.
We report on the observation of antiferromagnetic correlations of ultracold fermions in a variety of optical lattice geometries that are well described by the Hubbard model, including dimers, 1D chains, ladders, isolated and coupled honeycomb planes, as well as square and cubic lattices. The dependence of the strength of spin correlations on the specific geometry is experimentally studied by measuring the correlations along different lattice tunneling links, where a redistribution of correlations between the different lattice links is observed. By measuring the correlations in a crossover between distinct geometries, we demonstrate an effective reduction of the dimensionality for our atom numbers and temperatures. We also investigate the formation and redistribution time of spin correlations by dynamically changing the lattice geometry and studying the time evolution of the system. Time scales ranging from a sudden quench of the lattice geometry to an adiabatic evolution are probed.
The transient regime of far-from-equilibrium quantum many-body dynamics lacks the established organizing principles that universality and scaling provide in equilibrium. It is least understood for two-dimensional short-range interacting systems, where mean-field arguments are not expected to hold, controlled theoretical descriptions are few, and fluctuations are strong. Here we investigate the quench dynamics of the transverse-field Ising model using programmable Rydberg-atom arrays realizing honeycomb, square, kagome, and triangular lattices. Starting from a fully magnetized state, we observe a pronounced softening of the dominant collective magnetization oscillation accompanied by a maximum in the damping rate, signaling a crossover between interaction- and field-dominated transient dynamics. Even though the microscopic lattice geometries are different, both the oscillation frequencies and the damping rates collapse onto common curves after being rescaled by the coordination-number-weighted interaction strength. Our findings show that a mean-field description effectively reproduces the magnetization oscillations. The importance of correlated quantum fluctuations is underlined by the failure of the discrete truncated Wigner approximation to predict the damping for strong interactions, while tree-tensor-network simulations reproduce the dynamics accurately. These results reveal a robust scaling regime governing the transient dynamics of short-range interacting two-dimensional quantum magnets. They reveal that the dominant transient dynamics is governed by a simple collective description despite the presence of strong quantum fluctuations --- an important insight in the quest to uncover organizing principles in far-from-equilibrium quantum matter.
The task of exploring and understanding various aspects of far-from-equilibrium dynamics of closed and generic quantum many-body systems has received a thrust of attention in recent years, driven partly by remarkable advances in ultracold experimental technologies. In this work, for the paradigmatic Ising spin chain with transverse and longitudinal fields and partly motivated by the practice of site-resolved control in contemporary ultracold experiments, we present numerical observations of several fine-grained (small-subsystem level) features of far-from-equilibrium dynamics from a quantum informational point of view, induced by quantum quenches far across the Ising critical point between states deep inside the para- and ferro-magnetic regimes. Rather featureless dynamics is seen for ferromagnetic to paramagnetic quenches, but paramagnetic to ferromagnetic quenches exhibit rich behaviour, including recurrences of an approximately Page-like dynamics of entanglement entropies of one- and two-spin subsystems, periodic but short-lived occurrences of approximately 1−uniform states, a series of sudden deaths and revivals of entanglement between two spins in the system's bulk, non-analytic cusps in single-copy entanglement entropy for three-spin and bigger subsystems, insufficient mixedness and a series of scrambling-unscrambling of local mutual information between neighboring spins. Moreover, essentially indistinguishable dynamics is seen at very early times between the integrable limit (zero longitudinal field) and non-integrable cases, with the former eventually showing signatures of better mixing and faster approach to equilibration than the latter. These features are expected to hold for quench dynamics across Ising quantum critical points in more complicated systems.