Science Daily April 26, 2023
In the quantum world information is often closely linked to surface area. This strange and counter-intuitive fact has been theoretically predicted years ago, now it has now been measured: ‘Mutual quantum information’ scales with surface, not with volume. An international team of researchers ( Austria, Germany, France, Portugal, USA- New York University, Flatiron Institute, Switzerland) measured the von Neumann entropy of spatially extended subsystems in an ultracold atom simulator of one-dimensional quantum field theories. They experimentally verified the area law of quantum mutual information, one of the fundamental properties of equilibrium states of gapped quantum many-body systems. They studied the dependence of mutual information on temperature and on the separation between the subsystems. According to the researchers their work represents a step towards employing ultracold atom simulators to probe entanglement in quantum field theories… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Schematic of the experimental protocol. Credit: Nature Physics (2023)