Light goes faster in reverse

Pavle Ilija Premović

Rolf W. Landauer

Ri-Hua Zheng, Yang Xiao, Yu Wang +2 more

In a symmetry-restoration quantum Mpemba effect, an initial state with stronger local symmetry breaking can lose that memory faster than a state that starts closer to the symmetric manifold. We study how this local ordering reversal depends on the spatial profile of a longitudinal field in a clean U(1)-conserving spin chain, comparing spectral level statistics with crossings of the entanglement asymmetry for the same Hamiltonians. We find that Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE)-like level statistics alone do not determine whether Mpemba crossings occur. Across field textures, GOE-like spectra can occur with or without entanglement-asymmetry crossings at the same field strength. In a near-staggered detuned field, the total charge-sector coherence reverses its ordering while the entanglement asymmetry retains its initial order. This contrast links the crossing response to the distribution of local charge-sector coherence and its entropic weighting in the reduced density matrix.

Jennifer M. Rice

Aephraim M. Steinberg

Nothing can travel faster than light. Despite a recent raft of reports in the media, this statement is as true now as it ever was. Nonetheless, experiments over the past 20 years have been forcing us to re-examine what we mean by the word "nothing". In the latest experiment, a group of researchers at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, US, observed the peak of a laser pulse leave a small cell filled with caesium gas before it had even entered the cell (L J Wang, A Kuzmich and A Dogariu 2000 Nature 406 277). Apparently, the peak of this pulse is simply not the kind of "thing" to which Einstein's famous law applies.

J. P. Marangos