Excited state quantum phase transition and Loschmidt echo spectra in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

Identifying dynamical signatures of excited state quantum phase transitions (ESQPTs) in experimentally realizable quantum many-body systems is helpful for understanding the dynamical effects of ESQPTs. In such systems, the highly controllable spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) offer an exceptional platform to study ESQPTs. In this work, we investigate the dynamical characteristics of the ESQPT in spin-$1$ BEC by means of the Loschmidt echo spectrum. The Loschmidt echo spectrum is an extension of the well-known Loschmidt echo and definded as the overlaps between the evolved state and the excited states of the initial Hamiltonian. We show that both the time evolved and long time averaged Loschmidt echo spectrum undergo a remarkable change as the system passes through the critical point of the ESQPT. Moreover, the particular behavior exhibited by the Loschmidt echo spectrum at the critical point stand as a dynamical detector for probing the ESQPT. We further demonstrate how to capture the features of the ESQPT by using the energy distribution associated with the Loschmidt echo spectrum for time evolved and long time averaged cases, respectrively. Our findings contribute to a further verification of the usefulness of the Loschmidt echo spectrum for witnessing various quantum phase transitions in many-body systems and provide a new way to experimentally examine the dynamical consequences of ESQPTs.