Confined Dynamics in Long-Range Interacting Quantum Spin Chains

We study the quasiparticle excitation and quench dynamics of the one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model with power-law (1/rα) interactions. We find that long-range interactions give rise to a confining potential, which couples pairs of domain walls (kinks) into bound quasiparticles, analogous to mesonic bound states in high-energy physics. We show that these bound states have dramatic consequences for the non-equilibrium dynamics following a global quantum quench, such as suppressed spreading of quantum information and oscillations of order parameters. The masses of these bound states can be read out from the Fourier spectrum of these oscillating order parameters. We then use a two-kink model to qualitatively explain the phenomenon of long-range-interaction-induced confinement. The masses of the bound states predicted by this model are in good quantitative agreement with exact diagonalization results. Moreover, we illustrate that these bound states lead to weak thermalization of local observables for initial states with energy near the bottom of the many-body energy spectrum. Our work is readily applicable to current trapped-ion experiments.