Spectroscopy of interacting quasiparticles in trapped ions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a spectroscopic method to study quasiparticles in many-body quantum systems of trapped ions, enabling detailed characterization of their properties and interactions.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel spectroscopic technique to probe and analyze quasiparticles in engineered quantum systems, advancing the understanding of collective excitations.

Findings

Extracted system dispersion relation from dynamical response

Detected signatures of quasiparticle interactions

Characterized magnetic order in the system

Abstract

The static and dynamic properties of many-body quantum systems are often well described by collective excitations, known as quasiparticles. Engineered quantum systems offer the opportunity to study such emergent phenomena in a precisely controlled and otherwise inaccessible way. We present a spectroscopic technique to study artificial quantum matter and use it for characterizing quasiparticles in a many-body system of trapped atomic ions. Our approach is to excite combinations of the system's fundamental quasiparticle eigenmodes, given by delocalised spin waves. By observing the dynamical response to superpositions of such eigenmodes, we extract the system dispersion relation, magnetic order, and even detect signatures of quasiparticle interactions. Our technique is not limited to trapped ions, and it is suitable for verifying quantum simulators by tuning them into regimes where the collective excitations have a simple form.