Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Bloch oscillations and the lack of the decay of the false vacuum in a one-dimensional quantum spin chain

  O. Pomponio, M. A. Werner, G. Zarand, G. Takacs

  SciPost Phys. 12, 061 (2022) · published 15 February 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider the decay of the false vacuum, realised within a quantum quench into an anti-confining regime of the Ising spin chain with a magnetic field opposite to the initial magnetisation. Although the effective linear potential between the domain walls is repulsive, the time evolution of correlations still shows a suppression of the light cone and a reduction of vacuum decay. The suppressed decay is a lattice effect, and can be assigned to emergent Bloch oscillations.

  13 citations

• Quantum Monte Carlo simulations in the trimer basis: first-order transitions and thermal critical points in frustrated trilayer magnets

  Lukas Weber, Andreas Honecker, Bruce Normand, Philippe Corboz, Frédéric Mila, Stefan Wessel

  SciPost Phys. 12, 054 (2022) · published 8 February 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The phase diagrams of highly frustrated quantum spin systems can exhibit first-order quantum phase transitions and thermal critical points even in the absence of any long-ranged magnetic order. However, all unbiased numerical techniques for investigating frustrated quantum magnets face significant challenges, and for generic quantum Monte Carlo methods the challenge is the sign problem. Here we report on a general quantum Monte Carlo approach with a loop-update scheme that operates in any basis, and we show that, with an appropriate choice of basis, it allows us to study a frustrated model of coupled spin-1/2 trimers: simulations of the trilayer Heisenberg antiferromagnet in the spin-trimer basis are sign-problem-free when the intertrimer couplings are fully frustrated. This model features a first-order quantum phase transition, from which a line of first-order transitions emerges at finite temperatures and terminates in a thermal critical point. The trimer unit cell hosts an internal degree of freedom that can be controlled to induce an extensive entropy jump at the quantum transition, which alters the shape of the first-order line. We explore the consequences for the thermal properties in the vicinity of the critical point, which include profound changes in the lines of maxima defined by the specific heat. Our findings reveal trimer quantum magnets as fundamental systems capturing in full the complex thermal physics of the strongly frustrated regime.

  13 citations

• Blast from the past II: Constraints on heavy neutral leptons from the BEBC WA66 beam dump experiment

  Ryan Barouki, Giacomo Marocco, Subir Sarkar

  SciPost Phys. 13, 118 (2022) · published 28 November 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We revisit the search for heavy neutral leptons with the Big European Bubble Chamber in the 1982 proton beam dump experiment at CERN, focussing on those heavier than the kaon and mixing only with the tau neutrino, as these are far less constrained than their counterparts with smaller mass or other mixings. Recasting the previous search in terms of this model and including additional production and decay channels yields the strongest bounds to date, up to the tau mass. This applies also to our updated bounds on the mixing of heavy neutral leptons with the electron neutrino.

  13 citations

• Coupling quantum corrals to form artificial molecules

  Saoirsé E. Freeney, Samuel T. P. Borman,Jacob W. Harteveld, Ingmar Swart

  SciPost Phys. 9, 085 (2020) · published 10 December 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Quantum corrals can be considered as artificial atoms. By coupling many quantum corrals together, artificial matter can be created at will. The atomic scale precision with which the quantum corrals can be made grants the ability to tune parameters that are difficult to control in real materials, such as the symmetry of the states that couple, the on-site energy of these states, the hopping strength and the magnitude of the orbital overlap. Here, we systematically investigate the accessible parameter space for the dominant platform (CO molecules on Cu(111)) by constructing (coupled) quantum corrals of different sizes and shapes. By changing the configuration of the CO molecules that constitute the barrier between two quantum corrals, the hopping integral can be tuned between 0 and -0.3 eV for s- and p-like states, respectively. Incorporation of orbital overlap is essential to account for the experimental observations. Our results aid the design of future artificial lattices.

  13 citations

• Dissipation-driven integrable fermionic systems: from graded Yangians to exact nonequilibrium steady states

  Enej Ilievski

  SciPost Phys. 3, 031 (2017) · published 29 October 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Using the Lindblad master equation approach, we investigate the structure of steady-state solutions of open integrable quantum lattice models, driven far from equilibrium by incoherent particle reservoirs attached at the boundaries. We identify a class of boundary dissipation processes which permits to derive exact steady-state density matrices in the form of graded matrix-product operators. All the solutions factorize in terms of vacuum analogues of Baxter's Q-operators which are realized in terms of non-unitary representations of certain finite dimensional subalgebras of graded Yangians. We present a unifying framework which allows to solve fermionic models and naturally incorporates higher-rank symmetries. This enables to explain underlying algebraic content behind most of the previously-found solutions.

  13 citations

• Fast control of interactions in an ultracold two atom system: Managing correlations and irreversibility

  Thomás Fogarty, Lewis Ruks, Jing Li, Thomas Busch

  SciPost Phys. 6, 021 (2019) · published 8 February 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We design and explore a shortcut to adiabaticity (STA) for changing the interaction strength between two ultracold, harmonically trapped bosons. Starting from initially uncorrelated, non-interacting particles, we assume a time-dependent tuning of the inter-particle interaction through a Feshbach resonance, such that the two particles are strongly interacting at the end of the driving. The efficiency of the STA is then quantified by examining the thermodynamic properties of the system, such as the irreversible work, which is related to the out-of-equilibrium excitations in the system. We also quantify the entanglement of the two-particle state through the von Neumann entropy and show that the entanglement produced in the STA process matches that of the desired target state. Given the fundamental nature of the two-atom problem in ultracold atomic physics, the presented shortcut can be expected to have significant impact on many processes that rely on inter-particle interactions.

  13 citations

• Full counting statistics for interacting trapped fermions

  Naftali R. Smith, Pierre Le Doussal, Satya N. Majumdar, Grégory Schehr

  SciPost Phys. 11, 110 (2021) · published 22 December 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study $N$ spinless fermions in their ground state confined by an external potential in one dimension with long range interactions of the general Calogero-Sutherland type. For some choices of the potential this system maps to standard random matrix ensembles for general values of the Dyson index $\beta$. In the fermion model $\beta$ controls the strength of the interaction, $\beta=2$ corresponding to the noninteracting case. We study the quantum fluctuations of the number of fermions ${\cal N}_{\cal D}$ in a domain $\cal{D}$ of macroscopic size in the bulk of the Fermi gas. We predict that for general $\beta$ the variance of ${\cal N}_{\cal D}$ grows as $A_{\beta} \log N + B_{\beta}$ for $N \gg 1$ and we obtain a formula for $A_\beta$ and $B_\beta$. This is based on an explicit calculation for $\beta\in\left\{ 1,2,4\right\} $ and on a conjecture that we formulate for general $\beta$. This conjecture further allows us to obtain a universal formula for the higher cumulants of ${\cal N}_{\cal D}$. Our results for the variance in the microscopic regime are found to be consistent with the predictions of the Luttinger liquid theory with parameter $K = 2/\beta$, and allow to go beyond. In addition we present families of interacting fermion models in one dimension which, in their ground states, can be mapped onto random matrix models. We obtain the mean fermion density for these models for general interaction parameter $\beta$. In some cases the fermion density exhibits interesting transitions, for example we obtain a noninteracting fermion formulation of the Gross-Witten-Wadia model.

  13 citations

• Page curves and bath deformations

  Elena Caceres, Arnab Kundu, Ayan K. Patra, Sanjit Shashi

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 033 (2022) · published 13 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the black hole information problem within a semiclassically gravitating AdS$_d$ black hole coupled to and in equilibrium with a $d$-dimensional thermal conformal bath. We deform the bath state by a relevant scalar deformation, triggering a holographic RG flow whose “trans-IR” region deforms from a Schwarzschild geometry to a Kasner universe. The setup manifests two independent scales which control both the extent of coarse-graining and the entanglement dynamics when counting Hawking degrees of freedom in the bath. In tuning either, we find nontrivial changes to the Page time and Page curve. We consequently view the Page curve as a probe of the holographic RG flow, with a higher Page time manifesting as a result of increased coarse-graining of the bath degrees of freedom.

  13 citations

• Renormalization to localization without a small parameter

  Anton G. Kutlin, Ivan M. Khaymovich

  SciPost Phys. 8, 049 (2020) · published 1 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the wave function localization properties in a d-dimensional model of randomly spaced particles with isotropic hopping potential depending solely on Euclidean interparticle distances. Due to the generality of this model usually called the Euclidean random matrix model, it arises naturally in various physical contexts such as studies of vibrational modes, artificial atomic systems, liquids and glasses, ultracold gases and photon localization phenomena. We generalize the known Burin-Levitov renormalization group approach, formulate universal conditions sufficient for localization in such models and inspect a striking equivalence of the wave function spatial decay between Euclidean random matrices and translation-invariant long-range lattice models with a diagonal disorder.

  13 citations

• Transport in one-dimensional integrable quantum systems

  Jesko Sirker

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 17 (2020) · published 20 August 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These notes are based on a series of three lectures given at the Les Houches summer school on 'Integrability in Atomic and Condensed Matter Physics' in August 2018. They provide an introduction into the unusual transport properties of integrable models in the linear response regime focussing, in particular, on the spin-1/2 XXZ spin chain.

  13 citations