arXiv subjects

Tommaso Roscilde

Publications and source records attributed to Tommaso Roscilde.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Universal scaling of fluctuations and correlations across the superfluid transition

The critical behavior of a system near a continuous phase transition is commonly characterized by power laws and a set of universal critical exponents. Yet universality at phase transitions has even more fundamental manifestations. It dictates that all observables follow universal scaling functions, which may extend beyond simple power laws. Furthermore, microscopic details are captured entirely by only two system-specific scale factors, that rescale any measured quantity onto its universal form. In this work, we report the experimental validation of this prediction in ultracold lattice Bose gases undergoing the superfluid transition. We extract the scale factors by collapsing the order-parameter cumulants measured at varying entropies. We show that these factors specify scaling functions governing both the order-parameter distribution and two-point correlations. By measuring these scaling functions, we also determine three critical exponents $\beta$, $\gamma$ and $\nu$. Our results provide an experimental demonstration that universal scaling is simultaneously obeyed by multiple observables in a quantum many-body system.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2026

Transitions to super-radiance in ensembles of incoherently pumped emitters

Super-radiance is a striking phenomenon resulting from the collective interaction of emitters with light, and it is fundamentally related to the appearance of long-range correlations between the dipole moments of the emitters. As such, it represents a distinct phase of dissipative many-body systems compared to the case of independent emitters, similarly to how ferromagnetism stands out in magnetic materials in contrast to paramagnetism. In this work we address the conditions under which the transition to super-radiance can occur in ensembles of emitters subject to dephasing and individual decay -- a situation which is particularly relevant to the case of emitters in the solid state. The simplifying assumption of an ensemble of permutationally invariant emitters allows for the efficient solution of both the dissipative dynamics after a pulsed excitation, as well as of the steady state under incoherent pumping. This exact solution allows us to benchmark a truncated cumulant expansion approach, which can give predictions for arbitrarily big system sizes. We show that super-radiance is fundamentally robust to sizable dephasing and non-radiative decay rates, both under a pulsed excitation, as well as under continuous pumping. This robustness is the result of the collective acceleration effect of super-radiant emission with respect to the individual coupling to a local environment. We establish the universal critical scaling laws at the transition between normal radiance and super-radiance; and we show that, in the super-radiant phase, significant finite-size crossovers can be observed before reaching the asymptotic scaling regime. Our results pave the way for future experiments to provide a quantitative characterization of the scaling properties of super-radiance, seen as a distinct non-equilibrium many-body phase in ensembles of incoherently pumped emitters.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Universal spin-squeezing dynamics in spinor condensates

The production of large-scale entangled states is one of the main goals of next-generation quantum technologies, with an immediate potential for applications in the context of entanglement-assisted quantum sensing. A very promising platform to achieve this goal is offered by ultracold spinor gases, made of atoms with a large internal spin sensitive to magnetic fields. Here we show that the native spin-changing collisions in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate, combined with an arbitrary quadratic Zeeman shift, can generate scalable spin squeezing in the collective spin of the ensemble, following the universal paradigm of the celebrated one-axis-twisting model. Squeezing dynamics is driven by the quadratic Zeeman shift when this shift is small; and by the spin-changing collisions for large shifts, in the form of stroboscopic squeezing. Turning off the Zeeman shift freezes out the collective-spin dynamics, so that the ensuing collective spin dynamics can be uniquely governed by an external field to be sensed. Our theoretical results pave the way for the use of spinor Bose gases with a large spin in fundamental studies of entanglement, as well as in advanced metrological applications.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Giant number-parity effect and scalable spin squeezing in Luttinger liquids

Finite-size quantum spin systems can be magnetized by the application of a symmetry-breaking field, but in general their symmetry is expected to be restored once the field is turned off adiabatically. Recently (F. Caleca et al., arXiv:2412.15493) we have shown that systems of half-integer spins with an odd number of sites and a parity-preserving Hamiltonian can retain a finite magnetization, hence exhibiting spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) at finite size. Here we generalize this phenomenon to spin chains whose low-energy physics (in zero field) realizes a Luttinger-liquid phase. We observe that odd-sized chains can exhibit a phenomenon of finite-size quasi-SSB, in which a net sub-extensive magnetization, $M \sim N^{1-1/(4K)}$ is retained, where $N$ is the number of sites and $K$ the Luttinger exponent. Interestingly, the states prepared by turning off the symmetry-breaking field quasi-adiabatically display scalable spin squeezing -- namely stronger the bigger the system -- regardless of the parity of $N$. The scaling of the squeezing parameter is dictated again by the Luttinger exponent, $\xi_R^2 \sim N^{-1+1/(2K)}$. This result shows that scalable quantum correlations with metrological significance, associated typically with high-dimensional systems, can be found as well in gapless one-dimensional ones; and they are a direct consequence of the critical nature of Luttinger liquids.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Observation of universal non-Gaussian statistics of the order parameter across a continuous phase transition

Second-order phase transitions are characterised by critical scaling and universality. The singular behaviour of thermodynamic quantities at the transition, in particular, is determined by critical exponents of the universality class of the transition. However, critical properties are also characterised by the probability distribution of the order parameter across the transition, where non-Gaussian statistics are expected, but remain largely unexplored. Here, making use of single-atom-resolved detection in momentum space, we measure the full probability distribution of the order-parameter amplitude across a continuous phase transition in an interacting lattice Bose gas. We find that fluctuations are captured by an effective potential -- reconstructed from the measured probability distribution by analogy with Landau theory -- displaying a non-trivial minimum in the superfluid (ordered) phase, which vanishes at the transition point. Additionally, we observe non-Gaussian statistics of the order parameter near the transition, distinguished by non-zero high-order cumulants undergoing abrupt sign changes. We show numerically that these sign changes of the cumulants obey critical scaling in homogeneous systems, and that their experimental behaviour is not reproduced by classical models, whereas it is captured by a low-temperature quantum model. Our results underscore the crucial role of order parameter statistics in probing critical phenomena and universality.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Exponential onset of scalable entanglement via twist-and-turn dynamics in XY models

The efficient preparation of scalable multipartite entanglement is a central goal in the development of next-generation quantum devices. In this work, we show that the so-called ``twist-and-turn" (TaT) dynamics for interacting spin ensembles, generated by Hamiltonians with U(1)-symmetric interactions and with a transverse field, can offer an important resource to reach this goal. For models with sufficiently high connectivity, TaT dynamics exhibits two key features: 1) it features both scalable squeezing at short times, as well as quantum Fisher information with Heisenberg scaling at later times; and 2) scalable multipartite entanglement (up to Heisenberg scaling) is reached in a time growing only logarithmically with system size, associated with an exponential buildup of quantum correlations. These results can be shown exactly in the XY model with a Rabi field and infinite range interactions, and numerically in the case of spatially decaying XY interactions, such as dipolar interactions in two dimensions, provided that unstable spin-wave modes do not develop for large system sizes and/or strong fields. For dipolar interactions, the entanglement dynamics at intermediate times is completely at odds with thermalization; and it appears to saturate the maximum speed of entanglement buildup allowed by Lieb-Robinson bounds generalized to power-law interacting systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquid Behavior in a Rydberg-encoded Spin Chain

Quantum fluctuations can disrupt long-range order in one-dimensional systems, and replace it with the universal paradigm of the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL), a critical phase of matter characterized by power-law decaying correlations and linearly dispersing excitations. Using a Rydberg quantum simulator, we study how TLL physics manifests in the low-energy properties of a spin chain, interacting under either the ferromagnetic or the antiferromagnetic dipolar XY Hamiltonian. Following quasi-adiabatic preparation, we directly observe the power-law decay of spin-spin correlations in real-space, allowing us to extract the Luttinger parameter. In the presence of an impurity, the chain exhibits tunable Friedel oscillations of the local magnetization. Moreover, by utilizing a quantum quench, we directly probe the propagation of correlations, which exhibit a light-cone structure related to the linear sound mode of the underlying TLL. Our measurements demonstrate the influence of the long-range dipolar interactions, renormalizing the parameters of TLL with respect to the case of nearest-neighbor interactions. Finally, comparison to numerical simulations exposes the high sensitivity of TLLs to doping and finite-size effects.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Giant number-parity effect leading to spontaneous symmetry breaking in finite-size quantum spin models

Spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) occurs when a many-body system governed by a symmetric Hamiltonian, and prepared in a symmetry-broken state by the application of a field coupling to its order parameter $O$, retains a finite $O$ value even after the field is switched off. SSB is generally thought to occur only in the thermodynamic limit $N\to \infty$ (for $N$ degrees of freedom). In this limit, the time to restore the symmetry once the field is turned off, either via thermal or quantum fluctuations, is expected to diverge. Here we show that SSB can also be observed in \emph{finite-size} quantum spin systems, provided that three conditions are met: 1) the ground state of the system has long-range correlations; 2) the Hamiltonian conserves the (spin) parity of the order parameter; and 3) $N$ is odd. Using a combination of analytical arguments and numerical results (based on time-dependent variational Monte Carlo and rotor+spin-wave theory), we show that SSB on finite-size systems can be achieved via a quasi-adiabatic preparation of the ground state -- which, in U(1)-symmetric systems, is shown to require a symmetry breaking field vanishing over time scales $\tau \sim O(N)$. In these systems, the symmetry-broken state exhibits spin squeezing with Heisenberg scaling.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2024

Emerging Non-Hermitian Topology in a Chiral Driven-Dissipative Bose-Hubbard Model

We introduce a driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard chain describing coupled lossy photonic modes, in which time-reversal symmetry is broken by a coherent drive with a uniform phase gradient. We investigate this model by means of a Gaussian variational ansatz and numerically prove that the steady-state solution is stabilized by an inhomogeneous profile of the driving amplitude, which damps out boundary effects. Our calculations unveil a non-equilibrium phase diagram showing low- and high-density phases for photons separated by a phase coexistence region in which the system exhibits the phenomenon of topological amplification and is characterized by a finite non-Hermitian winding number. Our work shows the emergence of non-Hermitian topological phases in an interacting model that can be naturally implemented with superconducting circuits.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Reconstructing the spatial structure of quantum correlations in materials

Quantum correlations are a fundamental property of quantum many-body states. Yet they remain experimentally elusive, hindering certification of genuine quantum behavior, especially in quantum materials. Here we show that the momentum-dependent dynamical susceptibility measured via inelastic neutron scattering enables the systematic reconstruction of a general family of quantum correlation functions, which express the degree of quantum coherence in the fluctuations of two spins at arbitrary mutual distance. Using neutron scattering data on the compound KCuF$_3$ $\unicode{x2014}$ a system of weakly coupled $S=1/2$ Heisenberg chains $\unicode{x2014}$ and of numerically exact quantum Monte Carlo data, we show that quantum correlations possess a radically different spatial structure with respect to conventional correlations. Indeed, they exhibit a new emergent length scale $\unicode{x2014}$ the quantum coherence length $\unicode{x2014}$ which is finite at any finite temperature (including when long-range magnetic order develops). Moreover, we show theoretically that coupled Heisenberg spin chains exhibit a form of quantum monogamy, with a trade-off between quantum correlations along and transverse to the spin chains. These results highlight real-space quantum correlators as an informative, model-independent means of probing the underlying quantum state of real quantum materials.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2024

Non-local quench spectroscopy of fermionic excitations in 1D quantum spin chains

The elementary excitations of quantum spin systems have generally the nature of weakly interacting bosonic quasi-particles, generated by local operators acting on the ground state. Nonetheless in one spatial dimension the nature of the quasiparticles can change radically, since many relevant one-dimensional $S=1/2$ Hamiltonians can be exactly mapped onto models of spinless fermions with local hopping and interactions. Due to the non-local nature of the spin-to-fermion mapping, observing directly the fermionic quasiparticle excitations is impossible using local probes, which are at the basis of all the forms of spectroscopy (such as neutron scattering) traditionally available in condensed matter physics. Here we show theoretically that \emph{quench spectroscopy} for synthetic quantum matter -- which probes the excitation spectrum of a system by monitoring the nonequilibrium dynamics of its correlation functions -- can reconstruct accurately the dispersion relation of fermionic quasiparticles in spin chains. This possibility relies on the ability of quantum simulation experiments to measure non-local spin-spin correlation functions, corresponding to elementary fermionic correlation functions. Our analysis is based on new exact results for the quench dynamics of quantum spin chains; and it opens the path to probe arbitrary quasiparticle excitations in synthetic quantum matter.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2024

Symmetry: a fundamental resource for quantum coherence and metrology

We introduce a new paradigm for the preparation of deeply entangled states useful for quantum metrology. We show that when the quantum state is an eigenstate of an operator $A$, observables $G$ which are completely off-diagonal with respect to $A$ have purely quantum fluctuations, as quantified by the quantum Fisher information, namely $F_Q(G)=4\langle G^2 \rangle$. This property holds regardless of the purity of the quantum state, and it implies that off-diagonal fluctuations represent a metrological resource for phase estimation. In particular, for many-body systems such as quantum spin ensembles or bosonic gases, the presence of off-diagonal long-range order (for a spin observable, or for bosonic operators) directly translates into a metrological resource, provided that the system remains in a well-defined symmetry sector. The latter is defined e.g. by one component of the collective spin or by its parity in spin systems; and by a particle-number sector for bosons. Our results establish the optimal use for metrology of arbitrarily non-Gaussian quantum correlations in a large variety of many-body systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Scalable spin squeezing from critical slowing down in short-range interacting systems

Long-range spin-spin interactions are known to generate non-equilibrium dynamics which can squeeze the collective spin of a quantum spin ensemble in a scalable manner, leading to states whose metrologically useful entanglement grows with system size. Here we show theoretically that scalable squeezing can be produced in 2d U(1)-symmetric systems even by short-range interactions, i.e. interactions that at equilibrium do not lead to long-range order at finite temperatures, but rather to an extended, Berezhinski-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) critical phase. If the initial state is a coherent spin state in the easy plane of interactions, whose energy corresponds to a thermal state in the critical BKT phase, the non-equilibrium dynamics exhibits critical slowing down, corresponding to a power-law decay of the collective magnetization in time. This slow decay protects scalable squeezing, whose scaling reveals in turn the decay exponent of the magnetization. Our results open the path to realizing massive entangled states of potential metrological interest in many relevant platforms of quantum simulation and information processing -- such as Mott insulators of ultracold atoms, or superconducting circuits -- characterized by short-range interactions in planar geometries.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Measuring bipartite spin correlations of lattice-trapped dipolar atoms

We demonstrate a bipartition technique using a super-lattice architecture to access correlations between alternating planes of a mesoscopic array of spin-3 chromium atoms trapped in a 3D optical lattice. Using this method, we observe that out-of-equilibrium dynamics driven by long-range dipolar interactions lead to spin anti-correlations between the two spatially separated subsystems. Our bipartite measurements reveal a subtle interplay between the anisotropy of the 3D dipolar interactions and that of the lattice structure, without requiring single-site addressing. We compare our results to theoretical predictions based on a truncated cumulant expansion and a new cluster semi-classical method that we use to investigate correlations at the microscopic scale. Comparison with a high-temperature analytical model reveals quantum thermalization at a high negative spin temperature.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2024

Quantum correlations in the steady state of light-emitter ensembles from perturbation theory

The coupling of a quantum system to an environment leads generally to decoherence, and it is detrimental to quantum correlations within the system itself. Yet some forms of quantum correlations can be robust to the presence of an environment - or may even be stabilized by it. Predicting (let alone understanding) them remains arduous, given that the steady state of an open quantum system can be very different from an equilibrium thermodynamic state; and its reconstruction requires generically the numerical solution of the Lindblad equation, which is extremely costly for numerics. Here we focus on the highly relevant situation of ensembles of light emitters undergoing spontaneous decay; and we show that, whenever their Hamiltonian is perturbed away from a U(1) symmetric form, steady-state quantum correlations can be reconstructed via pure-state perturbation theory. Our main result is that in systems of light emitters subject to single-emitter or two-emitter driving, the steady state perturbed away from the U(1) limit generically exhibits spin squeezing; and it has minimal uncertainty for the collective-spin components, revealing that squeezing represents the optimal resource for entanglement-assisted metrology using this state.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Quantum degeneracy and spin entanglement in ideal quantum gases

Quantum degeneracy is the central many-body feature of ideal quantum gases stemming from quantum mechanics. In this work we address its relationship to the most fundamental form of non-classicality in many-body system, i.e. many-body entanglement. We aim at establishing a quantitative link between quantum degeneracy and entanglement in spinful ideal gases, using entanglement witness criteria based on the variance of the collective spin of the spin ensemble. We show that spin-1/2 ideal Bose gases do not possess entanglement which can be revealed from such entanglement criteria. On the contrary, ideal spin-1/2 Fermi gases exhibit spin entanglement revealed by the collective-spin variances upon entering quantum degeneracy, due to the formation of highly non-local spin singlets. We map out the regime of detectable spin entanglement for Fermi gases in free space as well as in a parabolic trap, and probe the robustness of spin entanglement to thermal effects and spin imbalance. Spin entanglement in degenerate Fermi gases is amenable to experimental observation using state-of-the-art spin detection techniques in ultracold atoms.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Suppression of Bogoliubov momentum pairing and emergence of non-Gaussian correlations in ultracold interacting Bose gases

Strongly correlated quantum matter -- such as interacting electron systems or interacting quantum fluids -- possesses properties that cannot be understood in terms of linear fluctuations and free quasi-particles. Quantum fluctuations in these systems are indeed large and generically exhibit non-Gaussian statistics -- a property captured only by inspecting high-order correlations, whose quantitative reconstruction poses a formidable challenge to both experiments and theory alike. A prime example of correlated quantum matter is the strongly interacting Bose fluid, realized by superfluid Helium and, more recently, ultra-cold atoms. Here, we experimentally study interacting Bose gases from the weakly to the strongly interacting regime through single-atom-resolved correlations in momentum space. We observe that the Bogoliubov pairing among modes of opposite momenta, emblematic of the weakly interacting regime, is suppressed as interactions become stronger. This departure from the predictions of Bogoliubov theory signals the onset of the strongly correlated regime, as confirmed by numerical simulations that highlight the role of non-linear quantum fluctuations in our system. Additionally, our measurements unveil a non-zero four-operator cumulant at even stronger interactions, which is a direct signature of non-Gaussian correlations. These results shed light on the emergence and physical origin of non-Gaussian correlations in ensembles of interacting bosons.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2023

Spectroscopy of elementary excitations from quench dynamics in a dipolar XY Rydberg simulator

We use a Rydberg quantum simulator to demonstrate a new form of spectroscopy, called quench spectroscopy, which probes the low-energy excitations of a many-body system. We illustrate the method on a two-dimensional simulation of the spin-1/2 dipolar XY model. Through microscopic measurements of the spatial spin correlation dynamics following a quench, we extract the dispersion relation of the elementary excitations for both ferro- and anti-ferromagnetic couplings. We observe qualitatively different behaviors between the two cases that result from the long-range nature of the interactions, and the frustration inherent in the antiferromagnet. In particular, the ferromagnet exhibits elementary excitations behaving as linear spin waves. In the anti-ferromagnet, spin waves appear to decay, suggesting the presence of strong nonlinearities. Our demonstration highlights the importance of power-law interactions on the excitation spectrum of a many-body system.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗