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arXiv:2410.22003 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Harnessing spin-qubit decoherence to probe strongly interacting quantum systems

Marcin Płodzień, Sambunath Das, Maciej Lewenstein, Christina Psaroudaki, Katarzyna Roszak

Published Apr 18, 2025• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Extracting information from quantum many-body systems remains a key challenge in quantum technologies due to experimental limitations. In this work, we employ a single spin qubit to probe a strongly interacting system, creating an environment conducive to qubit decoherence. By focusing on the $XXZ$ spin chain, we observe diverse dynamics in the qubit evolution, reflecting different parameters of the chain. This demonstrates that a spin qubit can probe both quantitative properties of the spin chain and qualitative characteristics, such as the bipartite entanglement entropy, phase transitions, and perturbation propagation velocity within the system. This approach reveals the power of small quantum systems to probe the properties of large, strongly correlated quantum systems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.111.l161115

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Extracting information from quantum many-body systems remains a key challenge in quantum technologies due to experimental limitations. In this work, we employ a single spin qubit to probe a strongly interacting system, creating an environment conducive to qubit decoherence. By focusing on the XXZXXZXXZ spin chain, we observe diverse dynamics in the qubit evolution, reflecting different parameters of the chain. This demonstrates that a spin qubit can probe both quantitative properties of the spin chain and qualitative characteristics, such as the bipartite entanglement entropy, phase transitions, and perturbation propagation velocity within the system. This approach reveals the power of small quantum systems to probe the properties of large, strongly correlated quantum systems.
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We study the effect of temperature on the ability of a qubit probe to distinguish between different phases in strongly correlated systems. Now to this end, we investigate a spin-1/2 Heisenberg XXZ chain coupled to a qubit probe via a pure dephasing interaction. At zero temperature, as reported previously, the decoherence dynamics exhibit different behavior in the gapped and gapless phases of the chain, with characteristic strong oscillations in the gapped phase and monotonic decay in the gapless phase. These oscillations decay much more slowly than expected with rising temperature in the gapped phase and their remnants are still visible at infinite temperature. In the gapless phase at low temperatures, using Luttinger liquid theory, we predict that the coherence exhibits asymptotic exponential decay in time, with the decay rate sensitive to the sign of the anisotropy parameter. We conclude that probe dynamics continue to carry information about the chain even at finite, reasonably small temperatures, positioning qubit probes as sensitive and robust detectors for quantum phases of correlated spin systems.
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This paper analyzes the decoherence induced on a single qubit by the interaction with a spin chain with nontrivial internal dynamics (XYXYXY-type interactions). The aim of the paper is to study the existence and properties of the so-called universal regime, in which the decoherence time scale becomes independent of the strength of the coupling with the environment. It is shown that, although such a regime does exist, as previously established by Cucchietti et al. [Phys. Rev. A 75, 032337 (2007)], it is not a clear signature of a quantum phase transition in the environment. In fact, this kind of universality also exists in the absence of quantum phase transitions. A universal regime can be related to the existence of an energy scale separation between the Hamiltonian of the environment and the one characterizing the system-environment interaction. The results presented also indicate that in the strong-coupling regime the quantum phase transition does not produce an enhancement of decoherence (as opposed to what happens in the weak-coupling regime).
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We analyze the dynamics of entanglement between two qubits which interact through collective and local environments. Our approach is based on a resonance theory which assumes a small interaction between qubits and environments and which gives rigorous perturbation theory results, valid for all times. We obtain expressions for (i) characteristic time-scales for decoherence, relaxation, disentanglement, and for (ii) the evolution of observables, valid uniformly in time t≥0t\geq 0t≥0. We introduce a classification of decoherence times based on clustering of the reduced density matrix elements, persisting on all time-scales. We examine characteristic dynamical properties such as creation, death and revival of entanglement. We discuss possible applications of our results for superconducting quantum computation and quantum measurement technologies.