Spatiotemporal dynamics of particle collisions in quantum spin chains

Abstract

We show that quantum Ising chains provide a platform to realize and probe elastic and inelastic particle collisions in pristine form. The proposed setup allows us to monitor the whole spatiotemporal dynamics of the collision event. The considered Ising chains admit a natural realization in various quantum simulator platforms, and we discuss a potentially feasible implementation of our collision protocol in Rydberg atoms. We also argue that the results and techniques we introduce can be readily extended to lattice gauge theories and to a higher number of spatial dimensions.