Excited-state quantum phase transitions and Loschmidt-echo spectra in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

Identifying dynamical signatures of excited-state quantum phase transitions (ESQPTs) in experimentally realizable quantum many-body systems is helpful for understanding the dynamical effects of ESQPTs. In such systems, the highly controllable spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) offer an exceptional platform to study ESQPTs. In this work, we investigate the dynamical characteristics of the ESQPT in spin-1 BEC by means of the Loschmidt echo spectrum. The Loschmidt echo spectrum is an extension of the well-known Loschmidt echo and defined as the overlaps between the evolved state and the excited states of the initial Hamiltonian. We show that both the time-evolved and long-time-averaged Loschmidt echo spectrum undergo a remarkable change as the system passes through the critical point of the ESQPT. Moreover, the particular behavior exhibited by the Loschmidt echo spectrum at the critical point stands as a dynamical detector for probing the ESQPT. We further demonstrate how to capture the features of the ESQPT by using the energy distribution associated with the Loschmidt echo spectrum for time-evolved and long-time-averaged cases, respectively. Our findings contribute to a further verification of the usefulness of the Loschmidt echo spectrum for witnessing various quantum phase transitions in many-body systems and provide a different way to experimentally examine the dynamical consequences of ESQPTs.