Abstract:
How a many-body quantum system thermalizes—or fails to do so—under its own interaction is afundamental yet elusive concept. Here we demonstrate nuclear magnetic resonance observation of theemergence of prethermalization by measuring out-of-time ordered correlations. We exploit Hamiltonianengineering techniques to tune the strength of spin-spin interactions and of a transverse magnetic field in aspin chain system, as well as to invert the Hamiltonian sign to reveal out-of-time ordered correlations. Atlarge fields, we observe an emergent conserved quantity due to prethermalization, which can be revealed byan early saturation of correlations. Our experiment not only demonstrates a new protocol to measure out-of-time ordered correlations, but also provides new insights in the study of quantum thermodynamics.
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