Observation of Dynamical Quantum Phase Transition with Correspondence in Excited State Phase Diagram

Abstract

Dynamical quantum phase transitions are closely related to equilibrium quantum phase transitions for ground states. Here, we report an experimental observation of a dynamical quantum phase transition in a spinor condensate with correspondence in an excited state phase diagram, instead of the ground state one. We observe that the quench dynamics exhibits a non-analytical change with respect to a parameter in the final Hamiltonian in the absence of a corresponding phase transition for the ground state there. We make a connection between this singular point and a phase transition point for the highest energy level in a subspace with zero spin magnetization of a Hamiltonian. We further show the existence of dynamical phase transitions for finite magnetization corresponding to the phase transition of the highest energy level in the subspace with the same magnetization. Our results open a door for using dynamical phase transitions as a tool to probe physics at higher energy eigenlevels of many-body Hamiltonians.

7 pages; 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Dynamical quantum phase transition from a critical quantum quench
• Ubiquity of zeros of Loschmidt amplitude for mixed states in different physical processes and their implications
• Dynamical quantum phase transitions in a spin chain with deconfined quantum critical points
• Mean-field spin-oscillation dynamics beyond the single-mode approximation for a harmonically trapped spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate