Probing Yang-Lee edge singularity by central spin decoherence

Yang-Lee edge singularities are the branch point of free energy on the complex plane of physical parameters and have been shown to be the simplest universality class of phase transitions. However, Yang-Lee edge singularities have not been regarded as experimentally observable since they occur at com...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New journal of physics 2017-08, Vol.19 (8), p.83009
Main Author: Wei, Bo-Bo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
05.50.+q
64.60.Bd
64.60.De
Coherence
Critical point
Free energy
Ising model
Lee-Yang zeros
Parameters
Partitions (mathematics)
Phase transitions
Physical properties
Physics
Quantum phenomena
Singularities
spin decoherence
Yang-Lee edge singularity
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Summary:Yang-Lee edge singularities are the branch point of free energy on the complex plane of physical parameters and have been shown to be the simplest universality class of phase transitions. However, Yang-Lee edge singularities have not been regarded as experimentally observable since they occur at complex physical parameters which are unphysical. A recent discovery regarding the relation between partition functions and probe spin coherence makes it experimentally feasible to access the complex plane of physical parameters. However, how to extract the critical point and the critical exponent of Yang-Lee edge singularities in many-body systems, which occurs only at the thermodynamic limit, has still been elusive. Here we show that the quantum coherence of a probe spin coupled to finite-size Ising-type spin systems presents universal scaling behavior near the Yang-Lee edge singularity. The finite-size scaling behavior of the quantum coherence of the probe spin predicts that one can extract the critical point and the critical exponent of the Yang-Lee edge singularity of an Ising-type spin system in the thermodynamic limit from the spin coherence measurement of the probe spin coupled to finite-size Ising-type spin systems. This finding provides a practical approach to studying the nature of Yang-Lee edge singularities of many-body systems.
ISSN:1367-2630
1367-2630
DOI:10.1088/1367-2630/aa77d6