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Experimental Test of the Jarzynski Equality in a Single Spin-1 System Using High-Fidelity Single-Shot Readouts
Wenquan Liu1,2,3, Zhibo Niu1,2, Wei Cheng1,2
1CAS Key Laboratory of Microscale Magnetic Resonance and School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
Abstract:
The Jarzynski equality (JE), which connects the equilibrium free energy with nonequilibrium work statistics, plays a crucial role in quantum thermodynamics. Although practical quantum systems are usually multilevel systems, most tests of the JE were executed in two-level systems. A rigorous test of the JE by directly measuring the work distribution of a physical process in a high-dimensional quantum system remains elusive. Here, we report an experimental test of the JE in a single spin-1 system. We realized nondemolition projective measurement of this three-level system via cascading high-fidelity single-shot readouts and directly measured the work distribution utilizing the two-point measurement protocol. The validity of the JE was verified from the nonadiabatic to adiabatic zone and under different effective temperatures. Our work puts the JE on a solid experimental foundation and makes the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center system a mature toolbox to perform advanced experiments of stochastic quantum thermodynamics.
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