2019/03/31 by Jin-Ming Cui, Fernando Javier Gómez-Ruiz, Yun-Feng Huang +3 · 59 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Dephasing #Ising model #Phase transition #Poisson distribution #Probability distribution #Quantum #Quantum dynamics #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum phase transition #Scaling #Superfluidity #Topological Materials and Phenomena #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s42005-020-0306-6
published in Communications Physics 3(1) (Nature Portfolio) · Main text 11 pages, 4 Figures, Supplemental Information: 9 pages, 3 Figures
arxiv created 2019/12/02 · openalex created_date 2019/12/05 · openalex publication_date 2020/03/06 · arxiv updated 2020/03/09 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract The Kibble–Zurek mechanism (KZM) describes the dynamics across a phase transition leading to the formation of topological defects, such as vortices in superfluids and domain walls in spin systems. Here, we experimentally probe the distribution of kink pairs in a one-dimensional quantum Ising chain driven across the paramagnet-ferromagnet quantum phase transition, using a single trapped ion as a quantum simulator in momentum space. The number of kink pairs after the transition follows a Poisson binomial distribution, in which all cumulants scale with a universal power law as a function of the quench time in which the transition is crossed. We experimentally verified this scaling for the first cumulants and report deviations due to noise-induced dephasing of the trapped ion. Our results establish that the universal character of the critical dynamics can be extended beyond KZM, which accounts for the mean kink number, to characterize the full probability distribution of topological defects.