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Domain-wall confinement and dynamics in a quantum simulator
- Source :
- Nature Physics; June 2021, Vol. 17 Issue: 6 p742-747, 6p
- Publication Year :
- 2021
-
Abstract
- Particles subject to confinement experience an attractive potential that increases without bound as they separate. A prominent example is colour confinement in particle physics, in which baryons and mesons are produced by quark confinement. Confinement can also occur in low-energy quantum many-body systems when elementary excitations are confined into bound quasiparticles. Here we report the observation of magnetic domain-wall confinement in interacting spin chains with a trapped-ion quantum simulator. By measuring how correlations spread, we show that confinement can suppress information propagation and thermalization in such many-body systems. We quantitatively determine the excitation energy of domain-wall bound states from the non-equilibrium quench dynamics. We also study the number of domain-wall excitations created for different quench parameters, in a regime that is difficult to model with classical computers. This work demonstrates the capability of quantum simulators for investigating high-energy physics phenomena, such as quark collision and string breaking.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 17452473 and 17452481
- Volume :
- 17
- Issue :
- 6
- Database :
- Supplemental Index
- Journal :
- Nature Physics
- Publication Type :
- Periodical
- Accession number :
- ejs56751648
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01194-3