Thermometry of ultracold atoms via nonequilibrium work distributions



: Johnson TH, Cosco F, Mitchison MT, Jaksch D, Clark SR

Publisher: AMER PHYSICAL SOC

: 2016

: Physical Review A

: PHYSICAL REVIEW A

: PHYS REV A

: ARTN 053619

: 93

: 5

: 6

: 2469-9926

: 2469-9934

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.93.053619


Estimating the temperature of a cold quantum system is difficult. Usually one measures a well-understood thermal state and uses that prior knowledge to infer its temperature. In contrast, we introduce a method of thermometry that assumes minimal knowledge of the state of a system and is potentially nondestructive. Our method uses a universal temperature dependence of the quench dynamics of an initially thermal system coupled to a qubit probe that follows from the Tasaki-Crooks theorem for nonequilibrium work distributions. We provide examples for a cold-atom system, in which our thermometry protocol may retain accuracy and precision at subnano-Kelvin temperatures.



Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 23:21