Stroboscopic observation of quantum many-body dynamics

TL;DR

This paper investigates how repeated stroboscopic measurements influence the dynamics of a quantum many-body system, revealing regimes of stabilization and destabilization depending on measurement timing and interaction strength.

Contribution

It introduces a method to simulate the effects of stroboscopic measurements on quantum many-body dynamics using time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group techniques.

Findings

Identification of regimes where many-particle configurations are stabilized by measurements.

Discovery of regimes where measurements destabilize the system.

Analysis of the impact of measurement timing and interaction strength on system behavior.

Abstract

Recent experiments have demonstrated single-site resolved observation of cold atoms in optical lattices. Thus, in the future it may be possible to take repeated snapshots of an interacting quantum many-body system during the course of its evolution. Here we address the impact of the resulting Quantum (anti-)Zeno physics on the many-body dynamics. We use the time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group to obtain the time evolution of the full many-body wave function, which is then periodically projected in order to simulate realizations of stroboscopic measurements. For the example of a one-dimensional lattice of spin-polarized fermions with nearest-neighbor interactions, we find regimes for which many-particle configurations are stabilized and destabilized depending on the interaction strength and the time between observations.