Ken Xuan Wei, ∗ Pai Peng (彭湃), Oles Shtanko, Iman Marvian, Seth Lloyd, Chandrasekhar Ramanathan, and Paola Cappellaro
DOI: arXiv:1812.04776v1
Abstract:
How a many-body quantum system thermalizes –or fails to do so– under its own interaction is a fundamental yet elusive concept. Here we demonstrate nuclear magnetic resonance observation of the emergence of prethermalization by measuring out-of-time ordered correlations. We exploit Hamiltonian engineering techniques to tune the strength of spin-spin interactions and of a transverse magnetic field in a spin chain system, as well as to invert the Hamiltonian sign to reveal outof-time ordered correlations. At large fields, we observe an emergent conserved quantity due to prethermalization, which can be revealed by an early saturation of correlations. Our experiment not only demonstrates a new protocol to measure out-of-time ordered correlations, but also provides new insights in the study of quantum thermodynamics.