Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Large second-order Josephson effect in planar superconductor-semiconductor junctions

  P. Zhang, A. Zarassi, L. Jarjat, V. Van de Sande, M. Pendharkar, J. S. Lee, C. P. Dempsey, A. P. McFadden, S. D. Harrington, J. T. Dong, H. Wu, A. -H. Chen, M. Hocevar, C. J. Palmstrøm, S. M. Frolov

  SciPost Phys. 16, 030 (2024) · published 25 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the current-phase relations of Al/InAs-quantum well planar Josephson junctions fabricated using nanowire shadowing technique. Based on several experiments, we conclude that the junctions exhibit an unusually large second-order Josephson harmonic, the $\sin(2\varphi)$ term. First, superconducting quantum interference devices (dc-SQUIDs) show half-periodic oscillations, tunable by gate voltages as well as magnetic flux. Second, Josephson junction devices exhibit kinks near half-flux quantum in supercurrent diffraction patterns. Third, half-integer Shapiro steps are present in the junctions. Similar phenomena are observed in Sn/InAs quantum well devices. We perform data fitting to a numerical model with a two-component current phase relation. Analysis including a loop inductance suggests that the sign of the second harmonic term is negative. The microscopic origins of the observed effect remain to be understood. We consider alternative explanations which can account for some but not all of the evidence.

  6 citations

• The bosonic skin effect: Boundary condensation in asymmetric transport

  Louis Garbe, Yuri Minoguchi, Julian Huber, Peter Rabl

  SciPost Phys. 16, 029 (2024) · published 25 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the incoherent transport of bosonic particles through a one dimensional lattice with different left and right hopping rates, as modelled by the asymmetric simple inclusion process (ASIP). Specifically, we show that as the current passing through this system increases, a transition occurs, which is signified by the appearance of a characteristic zigzag pattern in the stationary density profile near the boundary. In this highly unusual transport phase, the local particle distribution alternates on every site between a thermal distribution and a Bose-condensed state with broken $U(1)$-symmetry. Furthermore, we show that the onset of this phase is closely related to the so-called non-Hermitian skin effect and coincides with an exceptional point in the spectrum of density fluctuations. Therefore, this effect establishes a direct connection between quantum transport, non-equilibrium condensation phenomena and non-Hermitian topology, which can be probed in cold-atom experiments or in systems with long-lived photonic, polaritonic and plasmonic excitations.

  7 citations

• Hydrodynamics of a relativistic charged fluid in the presence of a periodically modulated chemical potential

  Nicolas Chagnet, Koenraad Schalm

  SciPost Phys. 16, 028 (2024) · published 24 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study charged hydrodynamics in a periodic lattice background. Fluctuations are Bloch waves rather than single momentum Fourier modes. At boundaries of the unit cell where hydrodynamic fluctuations are formally degenerate with their Umklapped copy, level repulsion occurs. Novel mode mixings between charge, sound, and their Umklapped copies appear at finite chemical potential - both at zero and finite momentum. We provide explicit examples for an ionic lattice, i.e. a periodic external chemical potential, and verify our results with numerical computations in fluid-gravity duality.

  2 citations

• Holographic Weyl anomaly in string theory

  Lorenz Eberhardt, Sridip Pal

  SciPost Phys. 16, 027 (2024) · published 24 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We compute the worldsheet sphere partition function of string theory on global AdS$_3$ with pure NS-NS flux. Because of an unfixed Möbius symmetry on the worldsheet, there is a cancellation of infinities and only a part of the answer is unambiguous. We show that it precisely reproduces the holographic Weyl anomaly and the ambiguous terms correspond to the possible counterterms of the boundary CFT.

  3 citations

• Self-consistent dynamical maps for open quantum systems

  Orazio Scarlatella, Marco Schirò

  SciPost Phys. 16, 026 (2024) · published 24 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In several cases, open quantum systems can be successfully described using master equations relying on Born-Markov approximations, but going beyond these approaches has become often necessary. In this work, we introduce the NCA and NCA-Markov dynamical maps for open quantum systems, which go beyond these master equations replacing the Born approximation with a self-consistent approximation, known as non-crossing approximation (NCA). These maps are formally similar to master equations, but allow to capture non-perturbative effects of the environment at a moderate extra numerical cost. To demonstrate their capabilities, we apply them to the spin-boson model at zero temperature for both a Ohmic and a sub-Ohmic environment, showing that they can both qualitatively capture its strong-coupling behaviour, and be quantitatively correct beyond standard master equations.

  3 citations

• Cavity-induced bifurcation in classical rate theory

  Kalle Sulo Ukko Kansanen, Tero Tapio Heikkilä

  SciPost Phys. 16, 025 (2024) · published 23 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We show how coupling an ensemble of bistable systems to a common cavity field affects the collective stochastic behavior of this ensemble. In particular, the cavity provides an effective interaction between the systems, and parametrically modifies the transition rates between the metastable states. We predict that the cavity induces a phase transition at a critical temperature which depends linearly on the number of systems. It shows up as a spontaneous symmetry breaking where the stationary states of the bistable system bifurcate. We observe that the transition rates slow down independently of the phase transition, but the rate modification vanishes for alternating signs of the system-cavity couplings, corresponding to a disordered ensemble of dipoles. Our results are of particular relevance in polaritonic chemistry where the presence of a cavity has been suggested to affect chemical reactions.

• Constraints on physical computers in holographic spacetimes

  Aleksander M. Kubicki, Alex May, David Pérez-Garcia

  SciPost Phys. 16, 024 (2024) · published 23 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Within the setting of the AdS/CFT correspondence, we ask about the power of computers in the presence of gravity. We show that there are computations on $n$ qubits which cannot be implemented inside of black holes with entropy less than $O(2^n)$. To establish our claim, we argue computations happening inside the black hole must be implementable in a programmable quantum processor, so long as the inputs and description of the unitary to be run are not too large. We then prove a bound on quantum processors which shows many unitaries cannot be implemented inside the black hole, and further show some of these have short descriptions and act on small systems. These unitaries with short descriptions must be computationally forbidden from happening inside the black hole.

  1 citation

• Crossover from attractive to repulsive induced interactions and bound states of two distinguishable Bose polarons

  Friethjof Theel, Simeon I. Mistakidis, Peter Schmelcher

  SciPost Phys. 16, 023 (2024) · published 23 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the impact of induced correlations and quasiparticle properties by immersing two distinguishable impurities in a harmonically trapped bosonic medium. It is found that when the impurities couple both either repulsively or attractively to their host, the latter mediates a two-body correlated behavior between them. In the reverse case, namely the impurities interact oppositely with the host, they feature anti-bunching. Monitoring the impurities relative distance and constructing an effective two-body model to be compared with the full many-body calculations, we are able to associate the induced (anti-) correlated behavior of the impurities with the presence of attractive (repulsive) induced interactions. Furthermore, we capture the formation of a bipolaron and a trimer state in the strongly attractive regime. The trimer refers to the correlated behavior of two impurities and a representative atom of the bosonic medium and it is characterized by an ellipsoidal shape of the three-body correlation function. Our results open the way for controlling polaron induced correlations and creating relevant bound states.

  4 citations

• Lieb-Schultz-Mattis anomalies and web of dualities induced by gauging in quantum spin chains

  Ömer Mert Aksoy, Christopher Mudry, Akira Furusaki, Apoorv Tiwari

  SciPost Phys. 16, 022 (2024) · published 22 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Lieb-Schultz-Mattis (LSM) theorems impose non-perturbative constraints on the zero-temperature phase diagrams of quantum lattice Hamiltonians (always assumed to be local in this paper). LSM theorems have recently been interpreted as the lattice counterparts to mixed 't Hooft anomalies in quantum field theories that arise from a combination of crystalline and global internal symmetry groups. Accordingly, LSM theorems have been reinterpreted as LSM anomalies. In this work, we provide a systematic diagnostic for LSM anomalies in one spatial dimension. We show that gauging subgroups of the global internal symmetry group of a quantum lattice model obeying an LSM anomaly delivers a dual quantum lattice Hamiltonian such that its internal and crystalline symmetries mix non-trivially through a group extension. This mixing of crystalline and internal symmetries after gauging is a direct consequence of the LSM anomaly, i.e., it can be used as a diagnostic of an LSM anomaly. We exemplify this procedure for a quantum spin-1/2 chain obeying an LSM anomaly resulting from combining a global internal $\mathbb{Z}^{\,}_{2}×\mathbb{Z}^{\,}_{2}$ symmetry with translation or reflection symmetry. We establish a triality of models by gauging a $\mathbb{Z}^{\,}_{2}\subset\mathbb{Z}^{\,}_{2}×\mathbb{Z}^{\,}_{2}$ symmetry in two ways, one of which amounts to performing a Kramers-Wannier duality, while the other implements a Jordan-Wigner duality. We discuss the mapping of the phase diagram of the quantum spin-1/2 $XYZ$ chains under such a triality. We show that the deconfined quantum critical transitions between Neel and dimer orders are mapped to either topological or conventional Landau-Ginzburg transitions. Finally, we extend our results to $\mathbb{Z}^{\,}_{n}$ clock models with $\mathbb{Z}^{\,}_{n}×\mathbb{Z}^{\,}_{n}$ global internal symmetry, and provide a reinterpretation of the dual internal symmetries in terms of $\mathbb{Z}^{\,}_{n}$ charge and dipole symmetries.

  8 citations

• Decay channels for double extremal black holes in four dimensions

  Johannes Aspman, Jan Manschot

  SciPost Phys. 16, 021 (2024) · published 22 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We explore decay channels for charged black holes with vanishing temperature in $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric compactifications of string theory. If not protected by supersymmetry, such extremal black holes are expected to decay as a consequence of the weak gravity conjecture. We concentrate on double extremal, non-supersymmetric black holes for which the values of the scalar fields are constant throughout space-time, and explore decay channels for which decay into BPS and anti-BPS constituents is energetically favorable. We demonstrate the existence of decay channels at tree level for large families of double extremal black holes. For specific charges, we also find stable non-supersymmetric black holes, suggesting recombination of (anti)-supersymmetric constituents to a non-supersymmetric object.

  1 citation