Experimental Determination of Dynamical Lee-Yang Zeros

Brandner, Kay; Maisi, Ville F.; Pekola, Jukka P.; Garrahan, Juan P.; Flindt, Christian

Abstract

Statistical physics provides the concepts and methods to explain the phase behavior of interacting many-body systems. Investigations of Lee-Yang zeros - complex singularities of the free energy in systems of finite size - have led to a unified understanding of equilibrium phase transitions. The ideas of Lee and Yang, however, are not restricted to equilibrium phenomena. Recently, Lee-Yang zeros have been used to characterize non-equilibrium processes such as dynamical phase transitions in quantum systems after a quench or dynamic order-disorder transitions in glasses. Here, we experimentally realize a scheme for observing Lee-Yang zeros in such non-equilibrium settings. We extract the dynamical Lee-Yang zeros of a stochastic process involving Andreev tunneling between a normal-state island and two superconducting leads from measurements of the dynamical activity along a trajectory. From short-time observations of the Lee-Yang zeros, we predict the largedeviation statistics of the activity which is typically difficult to measure. Our method paves the way for further experiments on the statistical mechanics of many-body systems out of equilibrium.

Citation

Brandner, K., Maisi, V. F., Pekola, J. P., Garrahan, J. P., & Flindt, C. (2017). Experimental Determination of Dynamical Lee-Yang Zeros. Physical Review Letters, 118(18), Article 180601. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.118.180601

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 10, 2017
• Online Publication Date: May 4, 2017
• Publication Date: May 5, 2017
• Deposit Date: Apr 19, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: May 4, 2017
• Journal: Physical Review Letters
• Print ISSN: 0031-9007
• Electronic ISSN: 1079-7114
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 118
• Issue: 18
• Article Number: 180601
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.118.180601
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/855206
• Publisher URL: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.180601