Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Gaining insights on anyon condensation and 1-form symmetry breaking across a topological phase transition in a deformed toric code model

  Joe Huxford, Dung Xuan Nguyen, Yong Baek Kim

  SciPost Phys. 15, 253 (2023) · published 22 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We examine the condensation and confinement mechanisms exhibited by a deformed toric code model proposed in [Castelnovo and Chamon, Phys. Rev. B 77, 054433 (2008)]. The model describes both sides of a phase transition from a topological phase to a trivial phase. Our findings reveal an unconventional confinement mechanism that governs the behavior of the toric code excitations within the trivial phase. Specifically, the confined magnetic charge can still be displaced without any energy cost, albeit only via the application of non-unitary operators that reduce the norm of the state. This peculiar phenomenon can be attributed to a previously known feature of the model: It maintains the non-trivial ground state degeneracy of the toric code throughout the transition. We describe how this degeneracy arises in both phases in terms of spontaneous symmetry breaking of a generalized (1-form) symmetry and explain why such symmetry breaking is compatible with the trivial phase. The present study implies the existence of subtle considerations that must be addressed in the context of recently posited connections between topological phases and broken higher-form symmetries.

  4 citations

• Vacuum-field-induced state mixing

  Diego Fernández de la Pradilla, Esteban Moreno, Johannes Feist

  SciPost Phys. 15, 252 (2023) · published 22 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  By engineering the electromagnetic vacuum field, the induced Casimir-Polder shift (also known as Lamb shift) and spontaneous emission rates of individual atomic levels can be controlled. When the strength of these effects becomes comparable to the energy difference between two previously uncoupled atomic states, an environment-induced interaction between these states appears after tracing over the environment. This interaction has been previously studied for degenerate levels and simple geometries involving infinite, perfectly conducting half-spaces or free space. Here, we generalize these studies by developing a convenient description that permits the analysis of these non-diagonal perturbations to the atomic Hamiltonian in terms of an accurate non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. Applying this theory to a hydrogen atom close to a dielectric nanoparticle, we show strong vacuum-field-induced state mixing that leads to drastic modifications in both the energies and decay rates compared to conventional diagonal perturbation theory. In particular, contrary to the expected Purcell enhancement, we find a surprising decrease of decay rates within a considerable range of atom-nanoparticle separations. Furthermore, we quantify the large degree of mixing of the unperturbed eigenstates due to the non-diagonal perturbation. Our work opens new quantum state manipulation possibilities in emitters with closely spaced energy levels.

  1 citation

• Beyond Fermi's golden rule with the statistical Jacobi approximation

  David M. Long, Dominik Hahn, Marin Bukov, Anushya Chandran

  SciPost Phys. 15, 251 (2023) · published 22 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Many problems in quantum dynamics can be cast as the decay of a single quantum state into a continuum. The time-dependent overlap with the initial state, called the fidelity, characterizes this decay. We derive an analytic expression for the fidelity after a quench to an ergodic Hamiltonian. The expression is valid for both weak and strong quenches, and timescales before finiteness of the Hilbert space limits the fidelity. It reproduces initial quadratic decay and asymptotic exponential decay with a rate which, for strong quenches, differs from Fermi's golden rule. The analysis relies on the statistical Jacobi approximation (SJA), which was originally applied in nearly localized systems, and which we here adapt to well-thermalizing systems. Our results demonstrate that the SJA is predictive in disparate regimes of quantum dynamics.

  2 citations

• Coherence requirements for quantum communication from hybrid circuit dynamics

  Shane P. Kelly, Ulrich Poschinger, Ferdinand Schmidt-Kaler, Matthew P. A. Fisher, Jamir Marino

  SciPost Phys. 15, 250 (2023) · published 22 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The coherent superposition of quantum states is an important resource for quantum information processing which distinguishes quantum dynamics and information from their classical counterparts. In this article we determine the coherence requirements to communicate quantum information in a broad setting encompassing monitored quantum dynamics and quantum error correction codes. We determine these requirements by considering hybrid circuits that are generated by a quantum information game played between two opponents, Alice and Eve, who compete by applying unitaries and measurements on a fixed number of qubits. Alice applies unitaries in an attempt to maintain quantum channel capacity, while Eve applies measurements in an attempt to destroy it. By limiting the coherence generating or destroying operations available to each opponent, we determine Alice's coherence requirements. When Alice plays a random strategy aimed at mimicking generic monitored quantum dynamics, we discover a coherence-tuned phase transitions in entanglement and quantum channel capacity. We then derive a theorem giving the minimum coherence required by Alice in any successful strategy, and conclude by proving that coherence sets an upper bound on the code distance in any stabelizer quantum error correction code. Such bounds provide a rigorous quantification of the coherence resource requirements for quantum communication and error correction.

  18 citations

• Generalized real-space Chern number formula and entanglement hamiltonian

  Ruihua Fan, Pengfei Zhang, Yingfei Gu

  SciPost Phys. 15, 249 (2023) · published 20 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We generalize a real-space Chern number formula for gapped free fermions to higher orders. Using the generalized formula, we prove recent proposals for extracting thermal and electric Hall conductance from the ground state via the entanglement Hamiltonian in the special case of non-interacting fermions, providing a concrete example of the connection between entanglement and topology in quantum phases of matter.

  2 citations

• Anisotropic Kondo line defect and ODE/IM correspondence

  Jingxiang Wu

  SciPost Phys. 15, 248 (2023) · published 20 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the anisotropic Kondo line defects in products of chiral SU(2) WZW models. We propose an ODE/IM correspondence for the anisotropic Kondo problems by considering the four-dimensional Chern Simons theory in the trigonometric case. We verify the claim both by explicit perturbative calculations in the ultraviolet and by exact WKB analysis in the infrared. In doing so, we derived the infrared dynamics of a large class of anisotropic line defects.

• Laser-induced heating for the experimental study of critical Casimir forces with optical trapping

  Ignacio A. Martinez, Artyom Petrosyan, Sergio Ciliberto

  SciPost Phys. 15, 247 (2023) · published 20 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Critical Casimir interactions represent a perfect example of bath-induced forces at mesoscales. These forces may have a relevant role in the living systems as well as a role in the design of nanomachines fueled by environmental fluctuations. Since the thermal fluctuations are enhanced in the vicinity of a demixing point of a second-order phase transition, we can modulate the magnitude and range of these Casimir-like forces by slight changes in the temperature. Here, we consider two optical trapped colloidal beads inside a binary mixture. The Casimir interaction is controlled by warming the mixture by laser-induced heating, whose local application ensures high reproducibility. Once this two-particle system is warmed, the critical behavior of different observables allows the system to become its self-thermometer. We use this experimental scheme for analyzing the energetics of a critical colloidal system under a non-equilibrium-driven protocol. We quantify how the injected work can be dissipated to the environment as heat or stored as free energy. Indeed, our system allows us to use the fluctuation theorems framework for analyzing the performance of this critically driven toy model. Our work paves the way for future experimental studies on the non-equilibrium features of bath-induced forces and the design of critically driven nanosystems.

  3 citations

• Topological interface states - A possible path towards a Landau-level laser in the THz regime

  Mark Oliver Goerbig

  SciPost Phys. 15, 246 (2023) · published 19 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Volkov-Pankratov surface bands arise in smooth topological interfaces, i.e. interfaces between a topological and a trivial insulator, in addition to the chiral surface state imposed by the bulk-surface correspondence of topological materials. These two-dimensional bands become Landau-quantized if a magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the interface. I show that the energy scales, which are typically in the 10-100 meV range, can be controlled both by the perpendicular magnetic field and the interface width. The latter can still be varied with the help of a magnetic-field component in the interface. The Landau levels of the different Volkov-Pankratov bands are optically coupled, and their arrangement may allow one to obtain population inversion by optical pumping. This could serve as the elementary brick of a multi-level laser based on Landau levels. Moreover, the photons are absorbed and emitted either parallel or perpendicular to the magnetic field, respectively in the Voigt and Faraday geometry, depending on the Volkov-Pankratov bands and Landau levels involved in the optical transitions.

  1 citation

• Carroll black holes

  Florian Ecker, Daniel Grumiller, Jelle Hartong, Alfredo Pérez, Stefan Prohazka, Ricardo Troncoso

  SciPost Phys. 15, 245 (2023) · published 19 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Despite the absence of a lightcone structure, some solutions of Carroll gravity show black hole-like behaviour. We define Carroll black holes as solutions of Carroll gravity that exhibit Carroll thermal properties and have a Carroll extremal surface, notions introduced in our work. The latter is a Carroll analogue of a Lorentzian extremal surface. As examples, we discuss the Carroll versions of Schwarzschild, Reissner-Nordström, and BTZ black holes and black hole solutions of generic 1+1 dimensional Carroll dilaton gravity, including Carroll JT and Carroll Witten black holes.

  13 citations

• Temporal fluctuations of correlators in integrable and chaotic quantum systems

  Talía L. M. Lezama, Yevgeny Bar Lev, Lea F. Santos

  SciPost Phys. 15, 244 (2023) · published 18 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We provide bounds on temporal fluctuations around the infinite-time average of out-of-time-ordered and time-ordered correlators of many-body quantum systems without energy gap degeneracies. For physical initial states, our bounds predict the exponential decay of the temporal fluctuations as a function of the system size. We numerically verify this prediction for chaotic and interacting integrable spin-1/2 chains, which satisfy the assumption of our bounds. On the other hand, we show analytically and numerically that for the XX model, which is a noninteracting system with gap degeneracies, the temporal fluctuations decay polynomially with system size for operators that are local in the fermion representation and decrease exponentially in the system size for non-local operators. Our results demonstrate that the decay of the long-time temporal fluctuations of correlators cannot be used as a reliable metric of chaos or lack thereof.

  2 citations