No Arabic abstract
We show that in certain one-dimensional spin chains with open boundary conditions, the edge spins retain memory of their initial state for very long times. The long coherence times do not require disorder, only an ordered phase. In the integrable Ising and XYZ chains, the presence of a strong zero mode means the coherence time is infinite, even at infinite temperature. When Ising is perturbed by interactions breaking the integrability, the coherence time remains exponentially long in the perturbing couplings. We show that this is a consequence of an edge almost strong zero mode that almost commutes with the Hamiltonian. We compute this operator explicitly, allowing us to estimate accurately the plateau value of edge spin autocorrelator.
Spin chains with open boundaries, such as the transverse field Ising model, can display coherence times for edge spins that diverge with the system size as a consequence of almost conserved operators, the so-called strong zero modes. Here, we discuss the fate of these coherence times when the system is perturbed in two different ways. First, we consider the effects of a unitary coupling connecting the ends of the chain; when the coupling is weak and non-interacting, we observe stable long-lived harmonic oscillations between the strong zero modes. Second, and more interestingly, we consider the case when dynamics becomes dissipative. While in general dissipation induces decoherence and loss of information, here we show that particularly simple environments can actually enhance correlation times beyond those of the purely unitary case. This allows us to generalise the notion of strong zero modes to irreversible Markovian time-evolutions, thus defining conditions for {em dissipative strong zero maps}. Our results show how dissipation could, in principle, play a useful role in protocols for storing information in quantum devices.
The elimination of defects from SiC has facilitated its move to the forefront of the optoelectronics and power-electronics industries. Nonetheless, because the electronic states of SiC defects can have sharp optical and spin transitions, they are increasingly recognized as a valuable resource for quantum-information and nanoscale-sensing applications. Here, we show that individual electron spin states in highly purified monocrystalline 4H-SiC can be isolated and coherently controlled. Bound to neutral divacancy defects, these states exhibit exceptionally long ensemble Hahn-echo spin coherence, exceeding 1 ms. Coherent control of single spins in a material amenable to advanced growth and microfabrication techniques is an exciting route to wafer-scale quantum technologies.
We present measurements of superconducting flux qubits embedded in a three dimensional copper cavity. The qubits are fabricated on a sapphire substrate and are measured by coupling them inductively to an on-chip superconducting resonator located in the middle of the cavity. At their flux-insensitive point, all measured qubits reach an intrinsic energy relaxation time in the 6-20 microseconds range and a pure dephasing time comprised between 3 and 10 microseconds. This significant improvement over previous works opens the way to the coherent coupling of a flux-qubit to individual spins.
Formation of quantum scars in many-body systems provides a novel mechanism for enhancing coherence of weakly entangled states. At the same time, coherence of edge modes in certain symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases can persist away from the ground state. In this work we show the existence of many-body scars and their implications on bulk coherence in such an SPT phase. To this end, we study the eigenstate properties and the dynamics of an interacting spin-$1/2$ chain with three-site cluster terms hosting a $mathbb{Z}_2 times mathbb{Z}_2$ SPT phase. Focusing on the weakly interacting regime, we find that eigenstates with volume-law entanglement coexist with area-law entangled eigenstates throughout the spectrum. We show that a subset of the latter can be constructed by virtue of repeated cluster excitations on the even or odd sublattice of the chain, resulting in an equidistant tower of states, analogous to the phenomenology of quantum many-body scars. We further demonstrate that these scarred eigenstates support nonthermal expectation values of local cluster operators in the bulk and exhibit signatures of topological order even at finite energy densities. Studying the dynamics for out-of-equilibrium states drawn from the noninteracting cluster basis, we unveil that nonthermalizing bulk dynamics can be observed on long time scales if clusters on odd and even sites are energetically detuned. In this case, cluster excitations remain essentially confined to one of the two sublattices such that inhomogeneous cluster configurations cannot equilibrate and thermalization of the full system is impeded. Our work sheds light on the role of quantum many-body scars in preserving SPT order at finite temperature and the possibility of coherent bulk dynamics in models with SPT order beyond the existence of long-lived edge modes.
The recently fabricated two-dimensional magnetic materials Cu9X2(cpa)6.xH2O (cpa=2-carboxypentonic acid; X=F,Cl,Br) have copper sites which form a triangular kagome lattice (TKL), formed by introducing small triangles (``a-trimers) inside of each kagome triangle (``b-trimer). We show that in the limit where spins residing on b-trimers have Ising character, quantum fluctuations of XXZ spins residing on the a-trimers can be exactly accounted for in the absence of applied field. This is accomplished through a mapping to the kagome Ising model, for which exact analytic solutions exist. We derive the complete finite temperature phase diagram for this XXZ-Ising model, including the residual zero temperature entropies of the seven ground state phases. Whereas the disordered (spin liquid) ground state of the pure Ising TKL model has macroscopic residual entropy ln72=4.2767... per unit cell, the introduction of transverse(quantum) couplings between neighboring $a$-spins reduces this entropy to 2.5258... per unit cell. In the presence of applied magnetic field, we map the TKL XXZ-Ising model to the kagome Ising model with three-spin interactions, and derive the ground state phase diagram. A small (or even infinitesimal) field leads to a new phase that corresponds to a non-intersecting loop gas on the kagome lattice, with entropy 1.4053... per unit cell and a mean magnetization for the b-spins of 0.12(1) per site. In addition, we find that for moderate applied field, there is a critical spin liquid phase which maps to close-packed dimers on the honeycomb lattice, which survives even when the a-spins are in the Heisenberg limit.