Towards experimental quantum-field tomography with ultracold atoms.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 26138511.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms8663 and PMC identifier 4506543.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The experimental realization of large-scale many-body systems in atomic-optical architectures has seen immense progress in recent years, rendering full tomography tools for state identification inefficient, especially for continuous systems. To work with these emerging physical platforms, new technologies for state identification are required. Here we present first steps towards efficient experimental quantum-field tomography. Our procedure is based on the continuous analogues of matrix-product states, ubiquitous in condensed-matter theory. These states naturally incorporate the locality present in realistic physical settings and are thus prime candidates for describing the physics of locally interacting quantum fields. To experimentally demonstrate the power of our procedure, we quench a one-dimensional Bose gas by a transversal split and use our method for a partial quantum-field reconstruction of the far-from-equilibrium states of this system. We expect our technique to play an important role in future studies of continuous quantum many-body systems.