Far-from-Equilibrium Spin Transport in Heisenberg Quantum Magnets

Abstract

We study experimentally the far-from-equilibrium dynamics in ferromagnetic Heisenberg quantum magnets realized with ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. After controlled imprinting of a spin spiral pattern with an adjustable wave vector, we measure the decay of the initial spin correlations through single-site resolved detection. On the experimentally accessible time scale of several exchange times, we find a profound dependence of the decay rate on the wave vector. In one-dimensional systems, we observe diffusionlike spin transport with a dimensionless diffusion coefficient of 0.22(1). We show how this behavior emerges from the microscopic properties of the closed quantum system. In contrast to the one-dimensional case, our transport measurements for two-dimensional Heisenberg systems indicate anomalous superdiffusion.