Probing Conformal Invariant of Non-unitary Two-Dimensional Systems by Central Spin Decoherence

Abstract

Universality classes of non-unitary critical theories in two-dimensions are characterized by the central charge. However, experimental determination of the central charge of a non-unitary critical theory has not been done before because of the intrinsic difficulty that complex parameters usually occur in non-unitary theory, which is not physical. Here we propose to extract the effective central charge of the non-unitary critical point of a two-dimensional lattice model from the quantum coherence measurement of a probe spin which is coupled to the lattice model. A recent discovery shows that quantum coherence of a probe spin which is coupled to a bath is proportional to the partition function of the bath with a complex parameter. Thus the effective central charge of a non-unitary conformal field theory may be extracted from quantum coherence measurement of a probe spin which is coupled to a bath. We have applied the method to the Yang-Lee edge singularity of the two-dimensional Ising model and extracted the effective central charge of the Yang-Lee edge singularity with good precision and tested other predictions of non-unitary conformal field theory. This work paves the way for the first experimental observation of the effective central charge of non-unitary conformal field theory.