Quantum wake dynamics in Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chains

Abstract

Traditional spectroscopy, by its very nature, characterizes properties of physical systems in the momentum and frequency domains. The most interesting and potentially practically useful quantum many-body effects however emerge from the deep composition of local, short-time correlations. Here, using inelastic neutron scattering and methods of integrability, we experimentally observe and theoretically describe a local, coherent, long-lived, quasiperiodically oscillating magnetic state emerging out of the distillation of propagating excitations following a local quantum quench in a Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain. This "quantum wake" displays similarities to Floquet states, discrete time crystals and nonlinear Luttinger liquids.