Experimental tests of Lieb-Robinson bounds

TL;DR

This paper reviews experimental tests of Lieb-Robinson bounds, which establish a maximum speed for information propagation in quantum systems, highlighting recent experiments and potential links to quantum chaos.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of experimental efforts to verify Lieb-Robinson bounds and explores their implications for quantum information and chaos.

Findings

Experimental evidence supports the existence of Lieb-Robinson bounds.

Quantum systems exhibit a finite speed for information propagation.

Connections to quantum chaos and butterfly effect are discussed.

Abstract

Judging by the enormous body of work that it has inspired, Elliott Lieb and Derek Robinson's 1972 article on the "Finite Group Velocity of Quantum Spin Systems" can be regarded as a \emph{high-impact paper}, as research accountants say. But for more than 30 years this major contribution to quantum physics has remained pretty much confidential. Lieb and Robinson's work eventually found a large audience in the years 2000, with the rapid and concomitant development of quantum information theory and experimental platforms enabling the characterisation and manipulation of isolated quantum systems at the single-particle level. In this short review article, I will first remind the reader of the central result of Lieb and Robinson's work, namely the existence of a maximum group velocity for the propagation of information in non-relativistic quantum systems. I will then review the experiments that most closely relate to this finding, in the sense that they reveal how information propagates in specific -- yet "real" -- quantum systems. Finally, as an outlook, I will attempt to make a connection with the quantum version of the butterfly effect recently studied in chaotic quantum systems.