Peng Xinhua, Luo Zhihuang, Zheng Wenqiang, Kou Supeng, Suter Dieter, Du Jiangfeng
Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China and Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Aug 22;113(8):080404. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.080404. Epub 2014 Aug 21.
Topological orders are exotic phases of matter existing in strongly correlated quantum systems, which are beyond the usual symmetry description and cannot be distinguished by local order parameters. Here we report an experimental quantum simulation of the Wen-plaquette spin model with different topological orders in a nuclear magnetic resonance system, and observe the adiabatic transition between two Z(2) topological orders through a spin-polarized phase by measuring the nonlocal closed-string (Wilson loop) operator. Moreover, we also measure the entanglement properties of the topological orders. This work confirms the adiabatic method for preparing topologically ordered states and provides an experimental tool for further studies of complex quantum systems.
