Quenches and confinement in a Heisenberg-Ising spin ladder

TL;DR

This paper investigates how confinement in a Heisenberg-Ising spin ladder influences quantum quench dynamics, revealing signatures in correlation functions and methods to measure meson masses through real-time evolution.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of confinement on light cone structures and provides a novel approach to measure meson masses from dynamical data.

Findings

Confinement alters the light cone structure of correlation functions.

Meson masses can be extracted from the real-time evolution of the order parameter.

Signatures of meson velocities are observable in the dynamics.

Abstract

We consider the quantum quench dynamics of a Heisenberg-Ising spin ladder which is an archetypal model in which confinement of elementary excitations is triggered by internal interactions rather than an external field. We show that the confinement strongly affects the light cone structure of correlation functions providing signatures of the velocities of the mesons of the model. We also show that the meson masses can be measured from the real time analysis of the evolution of the order parameter.