Quantum systems are known to be prone to dissipation, a process that entails the irreversible loss of energy and that is typically linked to decoherence. Decoherence, or the loss of coherence, occurs when interactions between a quantum system and its environment cause a loss of coherence, which is ultimately what allows quantum systems to exist in a superposition of states.

While dissipation is generally viewed as a source of decoherence in quantum systems, researchers at Tsinghua University recently showed that it could also be leveraged to study strongly correlated quantum matter.

Their paper, published in Nature Physics, introduces a new method to probe intrinsic quantum many-body correlations and demonstrates its potential for studying the dissipative dynamics in strongly correlated one-dimensional (1D) quantum gases.