Floquet conformal field theories with generally deformed Hamiltonians
Ruihua Fan, Yingfei Gu, Ashvin Vishwanath, Xueda Wen
SciPost Phys. 10, 049 (2021) · published 25 February 2021
- doi: 10.21468/SciPostPhys.10.2.049
- Submissions/Reports
-
Abstract
In this work, we study non-equilibrium dynamics in Floquet conformal field theories (CFTs) in 1+1D, in which the driving Hamiltonian involves the energy-momentum density spatially modulated by an arbitrary smooth function. This generalizes earlier work which was restricted to the sine-square deformed type of Floquet Hamiltonians, operating within a $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ sub-algebra. Here we show remarkably that the problem remains soluble in this generalized case which involves the full Virasoro algebra, based on a geometrical approach. It is found that the phase diagram is determined by the stroboscopic trajectories of operator evolution. The presence/absence of spatial fixed points in the operator evolution indicates that the driven CFT is in a heating/non-heating phase, in which the entanglement entropy grows/oscillates in time. Additionally, the heating regime is further subdivided into a multitude of phases, with different entanglement patterns and spatial distribution of energy-momentum density, which are characterized by the number of spatial fixed points. Phase transitions between these different heating phases can be achieved simply by changing the duration of application of the driving Hamiltonian. We demonstrate the general features with concrete CFT examples and compare the results to lattice calculations and find remarkable agreement.
Cited by 22
Authors / Affiliations: mappings to Contributors and Organizations
See all Organizations.- 1 Ruihua Fan,
- 1 2 Yingfei Gu,
- 1 Ashvin Vishwanath,
- 1 3 Xueda Wen
- 1 Harvard University
- 2 California Institute of Technology [CalTech]
- 3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT]