Measurable Consequences of the Local Breakdown of the Concept of Temperature

Abstract

Local temperature defined by a local canonical state of the respective subsystem, does not always exist in quantum many body systems. Here, we give some examples of how this breakdown of the temperature concept on small length scales might be observed in experiments: Measurements of magnetic properties of an anti-ferromagnetic spin-1 chain. We show that those magnetic properties are in fact strictly local. As a consequence their measurement reveals whether the local (reduced) state can be thermal. If it is, a temperature may be associated to the measurement results, while this would lead to inconsistencies otherwise.