NMR studies of localization and out-of-time ordered commutators

Abstract

This thesis presents a study of many-spin dynamics using a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) simulator. A novel correlation metric was designed and experimentally measured in a solid state spin chain system to investigate the dynamics of quantum information transport. By using control techniques to tune the parameters of the system interactions, the effects of disorder and interaction on the dynamics were investigated experimentally. It was shown that in the absence disorder can quench the spread of quantum information; while with weak interaction and disorder, quantum information can spread, albeit slowly. Having found a connection between the correlation metric and the recently proposed out-of-time ordered commutator, the correlation metric was used to experimentally probe a transition between ergodic and prethermal dynamics. Future experiments using out-of-time ordered commutators as a tool to probe many-body localization transition are discussed.