Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Dissipative cooling induced by pulse perturbations

  Andrea Nava, Michele Fabrizio

  SciPost Phys. 12, 014 (2022) · published 11 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the dynamics brought on by an impulse perturbation in two infinite-range quantum Ising models coupled to each other and to a dissipative bath. We show that, if dissipation is faster the higher the excitation energy, the pulse perturbation cools down the low-energy sector of the system, at the expense of the high-energy one, eventually stabilising a transient symmetry-broken state at temperatures higher than the equilibrium critical one. Such non-thermal quasi-steady state may survive for quite a long time after the pulse, if the latter is properly tailored.

  9 citations

• Multi-directional unitarity and maximal entanglement in spatially symmetric quantum states

  Márton Mestyán, Balázs Pozsgay, Ian M. Wanless

  SciPost Phys. 16, 010 (2024) · published 9 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider dual unitary operators and their multi-leg generalizations that have appeared at various places in the literature. These objects can be related to multi-party quantum states with special entanglement patterns: the sites are arranged in a spatially symmetric pattern and the states have maximal entanglement for all bipartitions that follow from the reflection symmetries of the given geometry. We consider those cases where the state itself is invariant with respect to the geometrical symmetry group. The simplest examples are those dual unitary operators which are also self dual and reflection invariant, but we also consider the generalizations in the hexagonal, cubic, and octahedral geometries. We provide a number of constructions and concrete examples for these objects for various local dimensions. All of our examples can be used to build quantum cellular automata in 1+1 or 2+1 dimensions, with multiple equivalent choices for the "direction of time".

  9 citations

• Equilibration of multitime quantum processes in finite time intervals

  Neil Dowling, Pedro Figueroa-Romero, Felix A. Pollock, Philipp Strasberg, Kavan Modi

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 043 (2023) · published 14 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A generic non-integrable (unitary) out-of-equilibrium quantum process, when interrogated across many times, is shown to yield the same statistics as an (non-unitary) equilibrated process. In particular, using the tools of quantum stochastic processes, we prove that under loose assumptions, quantum processes equilibrate within finite time intervals. Sufficient conditions for this to occur are that multitime observables are coarse grained in both space and time, and that the initial state overlaps with many different energy eigenstates. These results help bridge the gap between (unitary) quantum and (non-unitary) statistical physics, i.e., when all multitime properties and correlations are well approximated by stationary quantities, which includes non-Markovianity and temporal entanglement. We discuss implications of this result for the emergence of classical stochastic processes from multitime measurements of an underlying genuinely quantum system.

  9 citations

• Branes, quivers and wave-functions

  Taro Kimura, Miłosz Panfil, Yuji Sugimoto, Piotr Sułkowski

  SciPost Phys. 10, 051 (2021) · published 26 February 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider a large class of branes in toric strip geometries, both non-periodic and periodic ones. For a fixed background geometry we show that partition functions for such branes can be reinterpreted, on one hand, as quiver generating series, and on the other hand as wave-functions in various polarizations. We determine operations on quivers, as well as $SL(2,\mathbb{Z})$ transformations, which correspond to changing positions of these branes. Our results prove integrality of BPS multiplicities associated to this class of branes, reveal how they transform under changes of polarization, and imply all other properties of brane amplitudes that follow from the relation to quivers.

  9 citations

• Born again

  Jorge G. Russo, Paul K. Townsend

  SciPost Phys. 16, 124 (2024) · published 13 May 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Born's original 1933 theory of nonlinear electrodynamics (in contrast to the later Born-Infeld theory) is acausal for strong fields. We explore the issue of strong-field causality violation in families of theories containing Born and/or Born-Infeld, and many variants that have been previously proposed in contexts that include cosmology and black hole physics. Many of these variants are acausal and hence unphysical. A notable exception is the modified Born-Infeld theory with ModMax as its conformal weak-field limit.

  9 citations

• Long-range entanglement and topological excitations

  Gianpaolo Torre, Jovan Odavić, Pierre Fromholz, Salvatore Marco Giampaolo, Fabio Franchini

  SciPost Phys. Core 7, 050 (2024) · published 5 August 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Topological order comes in different forms, and its classification and detection is an important field of modern research. In this work, we show that the Disconnected Entanglement Entropy, a measure originally introduced to identify topological phases, is also able to unveil the long-range entanglement (LRE) carried by a single, fractionalized excitation. We show this by considering a quantum, delocalized domain wall excitation that can be introduced into a system by inducing geometric frustration in an antiferromagnetic spin chain. Furthermore, we show that the LRE of such systems is resilient against a quantum quench and the introduction of disorder, as it happens in traditional symmetry-protected topological phases. All these evidences establish the existence of a new phase induced by frustration with topological features despite not being of the usual type.

  9 citations

• Non-unitary quantum many-body dynamics using the Faber polynomial method

  Rafael Diogo Soares, Marco Schirò

  SciPost Phys. 17, 128 (2024) · published 7 November 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Efficient numerical methods are still lacking to probe the unconventional dynamics of quantum many-body systems under non-unitary evolution. In this work, we use Faber polynomials to numerically simulate both the dynamics of non-Hermitian systems and the quantum jumps unravelling of the Lindblad dynamics. We apply the method to the non-interacting and interacting Hatano-Nelson models evolving from two different setups: i) a Néel state, and ii) a domain wall. In the first case, we study how interactions preserve the initial magnetic order against the skin effect. In the second example, we present numerical evidence of the existence of an effective hydrodynamic description for the domain-wall melting problem in the non-interacting limit. Additionally, we investigate both the conditional and unconditional dynamics of the quantum jump unravelling in two quantum spin chains, which exhibit either the non-Hermitian or the Liouvillian skin effect. This numerical method inherently generalises the well-established method based on Chebyshev polynomials to accommodate non-Hermitian scenarios.

  9 citations

• Bootstrapping mixed MN correlators in 3D

  Stefanos R. Kousvos, Andreas Stergiou

  SciPost Phys. 12, 206 (2022) · published 28 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The recent emergence of the modern conformal bootstrap method for the study of conformal field theories (CFTs) has enabled the revisiting of old problems in classical critical phenomena described by three-dimensional CFTs. The study of such CFTs with $O(m)^n \rtimes S_n$ global symmetry, also known as MN models, is pursued in this work. Systems of mixed correlators involving scalar operators in two different representations of the global symmetry group are considered. Isolated allowed regions are found in parameter space for various values of $m$ and $n$. These "islands" can be separated into two qualitative groups: those close to the unitarity bound and those further away. As a by-product of our analysis generic tensor structures required to bootstrap any $G^n \rtimes S_n$ theory with $G$ arbitrary are worked out.

  9 citations

• Dark Matter Superfluidity

  Justin Khoury

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 42 (2022) · published 16 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In these lectures I describe a theory of dark matter superfluidity developed in the last few years. The dark matter particles are axion-like, with masses of order eV. They Bose-Einstein condense into a superfluid phase in the central regions of galaxy halos. The superfluid phonon excitations in turn couple to baryons and mediate a long-range force (beyond Newtonian gravity). For a suitable choice of the superfluid equation of state, this force reproduces the various galactic scaling relations embodied in Milgrom's law. Thus the dark matter and modified gravity phenomena represent different phases of a single underlying substance, unified through the rich and well-studied physics of superfluidity.

  9 citations

• Pairing instabilities of the Yukawa-SYK models with controlled fermion incoherence

  Wonjune Choi, Omid Tavakol, Yong Baek Kim

  SciPost Phys. 12, 151 (2022) · published 9 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The interplay of non-Fermi liquid and superconductivity born out of strong dynamical interactions is at the heart of the physics of unconventional superconductivity. As a solvable platform of the strongly correlated superconductors, we study the pairing instabilities of the Yukawa-Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (Yukawa-SYK) model, which describes spin-1/2 fermions coupled to bosons by the random, all-to-all, spin-independent and dependent Yukawa interactions. In contrast to the previously studied models, the random Yukawa couplings are sampled from a collection of Gaussian ensembles whose variances follow a continuous distribution rather than being fixed to a constant. By tuning the analytic behaviour of the distribution, we could control the fermion incoherence to systematically examine various normal states ranging from the Fermi liquid to non-Fermi liquids that are different from the conformal solution of the SYK model with a constant variance. Using the linearised Eliashberg theory, we show that the onset of the unconventional spin-triplet pairing is preferred with the spin-dependent interactions while all pairing channels show instabilities with the spin-independent interactions. Although the interactions shorten the lifetime of the fermions in the non-Fermi liquid, the same interactions also dress the bosons to strengthen the tendency to pair the incoherent fermions. As a consequence, the onset temperature $T_c$ of the pairing is enhanced in the non-Fermi liquid compared to the case of the Fermi liquid.

  9 citations