Hannover 2020 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 21: Ultracold plasmas and Rydberg systems I (joint session Q/A)
A 21.6: Talk
Wednesday, March 11, 2020, 15:15–15:30, f342
Does a disordered Heisenberg spin system thermalize under explicit symmetry breaking? — •Titus Franz1, Martin Gärttner2, Adrien Signoles3, Renato Ferracini Alves1, André Salzinger1, Annika Tebben1, Sebastian Geier1, David Grimshandl1, Carlos Brandl1, Clément Hainaut1, Gerhard Zürn1, and Matthias Weidemüller1, 4 — 1Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 226, 69120 Heidelberg — 2Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik, Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 226, 69120 Heidelberg — 3Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d'Optique Fraduate School, CNRS, Universite Paris-Saclay, 91127 Palaiseau cedex, France — 4Shanghai Branch, University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai 201315, China
The far-from equilibrium dynamics of generic disordered systems is expected to show thermalization, but this process is yet not well understood and shows a rich phenomenology ranging from anomalously slow relaxation to the breakdown of thermalization. While this problem is notoriously difficult to study numerically, we can experimentally probe the relaxation dynamics in an isolated spin system realized by a frozen gas of Rydberg atoms. By breaking the symmetry of the Hamiltonian with an external field, we can identify characteristics of the long time magnetization, including a non-analytic behavior at zero field. These can be understood from mean field, perturbative, and spectral arguments. The emergence of these distinctive features allows to falsify whether the experiment satisfies Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH).