Abstract

Quantum simulators have recently enabled experimental observations of the internal thermalization of quantum many-body systems. Often, the global energy and particle number are conserved and the system is prepared with a well-defined particle number—in a microcanonical subspace. However, quantum evolution can also conserve quantities, or charges, that fail to commute with each other. Noncommuting charges have recently emerged as a subfield at the intersection of quantum thermodynamics and quantum information. Until now, this subfield has remained theoretical. We initiate the experimental testing of its predictions, with a trapped-ion simulator. We prepare 6–21 spins in an approximate microcanonical subspace, a generalization of the microcanonical subspace for accommodating noncommuting charges, which cannot necessarily have well-defined nontrivial values simultaneously. We simulate a …

Date

April 1, 2023

Authors

Florian Kranzl, Aleksander Lasek, Manoj K Joshi, Amir Kalev, Rainer Blatt, Christian F Roos, Nicole Yunger Halpern

Journal

PRX Quantum

Volume

4

Issue

2

Pages

020318

Publisher

American Physical Society