



01881nas a2200193   4500008004100000245007300041210006900114260001400183490000600197520129800203100002001501700002201521700002101543700001601564700001801580700002401598700002801622856003701650       2023                        eng d00aExperimental Observation of Thermalization with Noncommuting Charges0 aExperimental Observation of Thermalization with Noncommuting Cha  c4/28/20230 v43 a<p>Quantum simulators have recently enabled experimental observations of quantum many-body systems&#39; internal thermalization. Often, the global energy and particle number are conserved, and the system is prepared with a well-defined particle number - in a microcanonical subspace. However, quantum evolution can also conserve quantities, or charges, that fail to commute with each other. Noncommuting charges have recently emerged as a subfield at the intersection of quantum thermodynamics and quantum information. Until now, this subfield has remained theoretical. We initiate the experimental testing of its predictions, with a trapped-ion simulator. We prepare 6-21 spins in an approximate microcanonical subspace, a generalization of the microcanonical subspace for accommodating noncommuting charges, which cannot necessarily have well-defined nontrivial values simultaneously. We simulate a Heisenberg evolution using laser-induced entangling interactions and collective spin rotations. The noncommuting charges are the three spin components. We find that small subsystems equilibrate to near a recently predicted non-Abelian thermal state. This work bridges quantum many-body simulators to the quantum thermodynamics of noncommuting charges, whose predictions can now be tested.</p>1 aKranzl, Florian1 aLasek, Aleksander1 aJoshi, Manoj, K.1 aKalev, Amir1 aBlatt, Rainer1 aRoos, Christian, F.1 aHalpern, Nicole, Yunger  uhttps://arxiv.org/abs/2202.04652