title: Simulating the Kibble-Zurek mechanism of the Ising model with a superconducting qubit system.
abstract: The Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) predicts the density of topological defects produced in the dynamical processes of phase transitions in systems ranging from cosmology to condensed matter and quantum materials. The similarity between KZM and the Landau-Zener transition (LZT), which is a standard tool to describe the dynamics of some non-equilibrium physics in contemporary physics, is being extensively exploited. Here we demonstrate the equivalence between KZM in the Ising model and LZT in a superconducting qubit system. We develop a time-resolved approach to study quantum dynamics of LZT with nano-second resolution. By using this technique, we simulate the key features of KZM in the Ising model with LZT, e.g., the boundary between the adiabatic and impulse regions, the freeze-out phenomenon in the impulse region, especially, the scaling law of the excited state population as the square root of the quenching speed. Our results provide the experimental evidence of the close connection between KZM and LZT, two textbook paradigms to study the dynamics of the non-equilibrium phenomena.
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.|Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Xueda
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wen
authors.affiliation: Research Institute of Superconductor Electronics, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.|Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Guozhu
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Quantum Engineering and Quantum Materials, SPTE, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
authors.forename: Dan-Wei
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Dong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lan
authors.affiliation: Research Institute of Superconductor Electronics, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Research Institute of Superconductor Electronics, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Yunyi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Yuhao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Xinsheng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.|Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Haifeng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.|Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.|Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Shi-Liang
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA.
authors.forename: Siyuan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: Research Institute of Superconductor Electronics, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.|Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Peiheng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wu