Stroboscopic observation of quantum many-body dynamics (1102.1605v2)

Abstract: Recent experiments have demonstrated single-site resolved observation of cold atoms in optical lattices. Thus, in the future it may be possible to take repeated snapshots of an interacting quantum many-body system during the course of its evolution. Here we address the impact of the resulting Quantum (anti-)Zeno physics on the many-body dynamics. We use the time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group to obtain the time evolution of the full many-body wave function, which is then periodically projected in order to simulate realizations of stroboscopic measurements. For the example of a one-dimensional lattice of spin-polarized fermions with nearest-neighbor interactions, we find regimes for which many-particle configurations are stabilized and destabilized depending on the interaction strength and the time between observations.