Quantum Noise Spectroscopy of Dynamical Critical Phenomena

Francisco Machado, Eugene A. Demler, Norman Y. Yao, and Shubhayu Chatterjee

Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 070801 – Published 16 August 2023

Abstract

The transition between distinct phases of matter is characterized by the nature of fluctuations near the critical point. We demonstrate that noise spectroscopy can not only diagnose the presence of a phase transition, but can also determine fundamental properties of its criticality. In particular, by analyzing a scaling collapse of the decoherence profile, one can directly extract the critical exponents of the transition and identify its universality class. Our approach naturally captures the presence of conservation laws and distinguishes between classical and quantum phase transitions. In the context of quantum magnetism, our proposal complements existing techniques and provides a novel toolset optimized for interrogating two-dimensional magnetic materials.

Received 28 December 2022
Accepted 12 June 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.070801

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Critical phenomena Phase transitions Quantum sensing

Spin noise spectroscopy

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsAtomic, Molecular & OpticalQuantum Information, Science & Technology

Authors & Affiliations

Francisco Machado ^1,2,3, Eugene A. Demler⁴, Norman Y. Yao^2,3, and Shubhayu Chatterjee^3,5

¹ITAMP, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
²Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
³Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
⁴Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
⁵Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA