Direct observation of geometric phase in dynamics around a conical intersection

Abstract

Conical intersections are ubiquitous in chemistry and physics, often governing processes such as light harvesting, vision, photocatalysis, and chemical reactivity. They act as funnels between electronic states of molecules, allowing rapid and efficient relaxation during chemical dynamics. In addition, when a reaction path encircles a conical intersection, the molecular wavefunction experiences a geometric phase, which can affect the outcome of the reaction through quantum-mechanical interference. Past experiments have measured indirect signatures of geometric phases in scattering patterns and spectroscopic observables, but there has been no direct observation of the underlying wavepacket interference. Here, we experimentally observe geometric-phase interference in the dynamics of a wavepacket travelling around an engineered conical intersection in a programmable trapped-ion quantum simulator. To achieve this, we develop a technique to reconstruct the two-dimensional wavepacket densities of a trapped ion. Experiments agree with the theoretical model, demonstrating the ability of analog quantum simulators -- such as those realised using trapped ions -- to accurately describe nuclear quantum effects.

10 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (7)

• The electronic properties of graphene
• Nodal Spin Density Wave and band topology of the FeAs based materials
• An Aharonov-Bohm interferometer for determining Bloch band topology
• Jahn-Teller systems from a cavity QED perspective
• Direct Geometric Probe of Singularities in Band Structure
• Determination of Multi-mode Motional Quantum States in a Trapped Ion System
• Simulating conical intersections with trapped ions

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