Bulletin of the American Physical Society
54th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics
Volume 68, Number 7
Monday–Friday, June 5–9, 2023; Spokane, Washington
Session V01: Poster Session III (4:00pm-6:00pm, PT)
4:00 PM,
Thursday, June 8, 2023
Room: Exhibit Hall C
Abstract: V01.00031 : Indication of a phase transition in time during the relaxation of an open quantum system
Presenter:
Julian Feß
(RPTU Kaiserslautern)
Authors:
Julian Feß
(RPTU Kaiserslautern)
Ling-Na Wu
(Technische Universität Berlin)
Artur Widera
(RPTU Kaiserslautern)
André Eckardt
(Technische Universität Berlin)
Alexander Schnell
(Technische Universität Berlin)
Jens Nettersheim
(RPTU Kaiserslautern)
Sabrina Burgardt
(RPTU Kaiserslautern)
Silvia Hiebel
(RPTU Kaiserslautern)
Recently, dynamical quantum phase transitions and universal scaling have been predicted and also observed in the non-equilibrium dynamics of isolated quantum systems after a quench, with time playing the role of the control parameter. However, signatures of such critical phenomena in time in open systems, whose dynamics is driven by the dissipative contact to an environment, were so far elusive.
Here, we present results indicating that phase transitions with respect to time can also occur during the relaxation dynamics of an open quantum systems described by mixed states. We experimentally measure the relaxation dynamics of the large atomic spin of individual Caesium atoms induced by the dissipative coupling via spin-exchange processes to an ultracold Bose gas of Rubidium atoms. For initial states far from equilibrium, the entropy of the spin state is found to peak in time, transiently approaching its maximum possible value, before eventually relaxing to its lower equilibrium value. Moreover, a finite-size scaling analysis based on numerical simulations shows that it corresponds to a dynamical phase transition of the dissipative system in the limit of large system sizes. It is signalled by the divergence of a characteristic length at a critical time, characterized by critical exponents that are found to be independent of system-details. Our results show that phase transitions in time are not restricted to occur in isolated systems, but are possible also during the dissipative evolution of open quantum systems.
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