Reconstructing the spatial structure of quantum correlations with spectroscopy

Quantum correlations are fundamental to many-body quantum physics, but are often difficult to experimentally probe. In this talk I show that the momentum-dependent dynamical susceptibility measured via inelastic neutron scattering enables the systematic reconstruction of quantum correlation functions, which express the degree of quantum coherence in the fluctuations of two spins at arbitrary mutual distance. Using neutron scattering data on the compound KCuF₃ — a system of weakly coupled S=1/2 Heisenberg chains — and of numerically exact quantum Monte Carlo data, we show that quantum correlations possess a radically different spatial structure with respect to conventional correlations. Indeed, they exhibit a new emergent length of quantum-mechanical origin — the quantum coherence length — which is finite at any finite temperature (including when long-range magnetic order develops). Moreover, we show theoretically that coupled Heisenberg spin chains exhibit a form of quantum monogamy, with a trade-off between quantum correlations along and transverse to the spin chains. These results highlight real-space quantum correlators as an informative, model-independent means of probing the underlying quantum state of real quantum materials.