Probing Lee-Yang zeros and coherence sudden death
Bo-Bo Wei, Ren-Bao Liu

TL;DR
This paper demonstrates that the coherence zeros of a probe spin can be used to experimentally observe Lee-Yang zeros of a many-body system, linking time and temperature in fundamental physics.
Contribution
It introduces a method to measure Lee-Yang zeros via probe spin coherence, enabling experimental access to complex zeros of partition functions.
Findings
Probe spin coherence zeros map to Lee-Yang zeros.
Sudden death of coherence at Lee-Yang edge singularities.
Reconstruction of the partition function from coherence measurements.
Abstract
As a foundation of statistical physics, Lee and Yang in 1952 proved that the partition functions of thermal systems can be zero at certain points (called Lee-Yang zeros) on the complex plane of temperature. In the thermodynamic limit, the Lee-Yang zeros approach to real numbers at the critical temperature. However, the imaginary Lee-Yang zeros have not been regarded as experimentally observable since they occur at imaginary field or temperature, which are unphysical. Here we show that the coherence of a probe spin weakly coupled to a many-body system presents zeros as a function of time that are one-to-one mapped to the Lee-Yang zeros of the many-body system. In the thermodynamic limit, of which the Lee-Yang zeros form a continuum, the probe spin coherence presents a sudden death at the edge singularities of the Lee-Yang zeros. By measuring the probe spin coherence, one can directly…
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