Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Probing Chern number by opacity and topological phase transition by a nonlocal Chern marker

  Paolo Molignini, Bastien Lapierre, Ramasubramanian Chitra, Wei Chen

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 059 (2023) · published 29 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In 2D semiconductors and insulators, the Chern number of the valence band Bloch state is an important quantity that has been linked to various material properties, such as the topological order. We elaborate that the opacity of 2D materials to circularly polarized light over a wide range of frequencies, measured in units of the fine structure constant, can be used to extract a spectral function that frequency-integrates to the Chern number, offering a simple optical experiment to measure it. This method is subsequently generalized to finite temperature and locally on every lattice site by a linear response theory, which helps to extract the Chern marker that maps the Chern number to lattice sites. The long range response in our theory corresponds to a Chern correlator that acts like the internal fluctuation of the Chern marker, and is found to be enhanced in the topologically nontrivial phase. Finally, from the Fourier transform of the valence band Berry curvature, a nonlocal Chern marker is further introduced, whose decay length diverges at topological phase transitions and therefore serves as a faithful indicator of the transitions, and moreover can be interpreted as a Wannier state correlation function. The concepts discussed in this work explore multi-faceted aspects of topology and should help address the impact of system inhomogeneities.

  3 citations

• On the quantum simulation of complex networks

  Duarte Magano, João Moutinho, Bruno Coutinho

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 058 (2023) · published 24 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Quantum walks provide a natural framework to approach graph problems with quantum computers, exhibiting speedups over their classical counterparts for tasks such as the search for marked nodes or the prediction of missing links. Continuous-time quantum walk algorithms assume that we can simulate the dynamics of quantum systems where the Hamiltonian is given by the adjacency matrix of the graph. It is known that such can be simulated efficiently if the underlying graph is row-sparse and efficiently row-computable. While this is sufficient for many applications, it limits the applicability for this class of algorithms to study real world complex networks, which, among other properties, are characterized by the existence of a few densely connected nodes, called hubs. In other words, complex networks are typically not row-sparse, even though the average connectivity over all nodes can be very small. In this work, we extend the state-of-the-art results on quantum simulation to graphs that contain a small number of hubs, but that are otherwise sparse. Hopefully, our results may lead to new applications of quantum computing to network science.

  1 citation

• Diffusion of muonic hydrogen in hydrogen gas and the measurement of the 1$s$ hyperfine splitting of muonic hydrogen

  J. Nuber, A. Adamczak, M. Abdou Ahmed, L. Affolter, F. D. Amaro, P. Amaro, A. Antognini, P. Carvalho, Y. -H. Chang, T. -L. Chen, W. -L. Chen, L. M. P. Fernandes, M. Ferro, D. Goeldi, T. Graf, M. Guerra, T. W. Hänsch, C. A. O. Henriques, M. Hildebrandt, P. Indelicato, O. Kara, K. Kirch, A. Knecht, F. Kottmann, Y. -W. Liu, J. Machado, M. Marszalek, R. D. P. Mano, C. M. B. Monteiro, F. Nez, A. Ouf, N. Paul, R. Pohl, E. Rapisarda, J. M. F. dos Santos, J. P. Santos, P. A. O. C. Silva, L. Sinkunaite, J. -T. Shy, K. Schuhmann, S. Rajamohanan, A. Soter, L. Sustelo, D. Taqqu, L. -B. Wang, F. Wauters, P. Yzombard, M. Zeyen, J. Zhang

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 057 (2023) · published 23 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The CREMA collaboration is pursuing a measurement of the ground-state hyperfine splitting (HFS) in muonic hydrogen ($\mu$p) with 1 ppm accuracy by means of pulsed laser spectroscopy. In the proposed experiment, the $\mu$p atom is excited by a laser pulse from the singlet to the triplet hyperfine sub-levels, and is quenched back to the singlet state by an inelastic collision with a H$_2$ molecule. The resulting increase of kinetic energy after this cycle modifies the $\mu$p atom diffusion in the hydrogen gas and the arrival time of the $\mu$p atoms at the target walls. This laser-induced modification of the arrival times is used to expose the atomic transition. In this paper we present the simulation of the $\mu$p diffusion in the H$_2$ gas which is at the core of the experimental scheme. These simulations have been implemented with the Geant4 framework by introducing various low-energy processes including the motion of the H$_2$ molecules, i.e. the effects related with the hydrogen target temperature. The simulations have been used to optimize the hydrogen target parameters (pressure, temperatures and thickness) and to estimate signal and background rates. These rates allow to estimate the maximum time needed to find the resonance and the statistical accuracy of the spectroscopy experiment.

  1 citation

• Out-of-equilibrium dynamics of two interacting optically-trapped particles

  Victor S. Dotsenko, Alberto Imparato, Pascal Viot, Gleb Oshanin

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 056 (2023) · published 17 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a theoretical analysis of a non-equilibrium dynamics in a model system consisting of two particles which move randomly on a plane. The two particles interact via a harmonic potential, experience their own (independent from each other) noises characterized by two different temperatures $T_1$ and $T_2$, and each particle is being held by its own optical tweezer. Such a system with two particles coupled by hydrodynamic interactions was previously realised experimentally in Bérut et al. [EPL 107, 60004 (2014)], and the difference between two temperatures has been achieved by exerting an additional noise on either of the tweezers. Framing the dynamics in terms of two coupled over-damped Langevin equations, we show that the system reaches a non-equilibrium steady-state with non-zero (for $T_1 \neq T_2$) probability currents that possess non-zero curls. As a consequence, in this system the particles are continuously spinning around their centers of mass in a completely synchronized way - the curls of currents at the instantaneous positions of two particles have the same magnitude and sign. Moreover, we demonstrate that the components of currents of two particles are strongly correlated and undergo a rotational motion along closed elliptic orbits.

  2 citations

• An exact local mapping from clock-spins to fermions

  Simone Traverso, Christoph Fleckenstein, Maura Sassetti, Niccolò Traverso Ziani

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 055 (2023) · published 15 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Clock-spin models are attracting great interest, due to both their rich phase diagram and their connection to parafermions. In this context, we derive an exact local mapping from clock-spin to fermionic partition functions. Such mapping, akin to techniques introduced by Fedotov and Popov for spin $\frac{1}{2}$ chains, grants access to well established numerical tools for the perturbative treatment of fermionic systems in the clock-spin framework. Moreover, in one dimension, it allows to use bosonization to access the low energy properties of clock-spin models. Finally, aside from the direct application in clock-spin models, this new mapping enables the conception of interesting fermionic models, based on the clock-spin counterparts.

• Ergodic Archimedean dimers

  Henrik Schou Røising, Zhao Zhang

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 054 (2023) · published 11 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study perfect matchings, or close-packed dimer coverings, of finite sections of the eleven Archimedean lattices and give a constructive proof showing that any two perfect matchings can be transformed into each other using small sets of local ring-exchange moves. This result has direct consequences for formulating quantum dimer models with a resonating valence bond ground state, i.e., a superposition of all dimer coverings compatible with the boundary conditions. On five of the composite Archimedean lattices we supplement the sufficiency proof with translationally invariant reference configurations that prove the strict necessity of the sufficient terms with respect to ergodicity. We provide examples of and discuss frustration-free deformations of the quantum dimer models on two tripartite lattices.

• The role of fluctuations in quantum and classical time crystals

  Toni L. Heugel, Alexander Eichler, Ramasubramanian Chitra, Oded Zilberberg

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 053 (2023) · published 10 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Discrete time crystals (DTCs) are a many-body state of matter whose dynamics are slower than the forces acting on it. The same is true for classical systems with period-doubling bifurcations. Hence, the question naturally arises what differentiates classical from quantum DTCs. Here, we analyze a variant of the Bose-Hubbard model, which describes a plethora of physical phenomena and has both a classical and a quantum time-crystalline limit. Fluctuations enter the system due to the intrinsic quantum uncertainty and/or due to finite coupling to an environment. These fluctuations can activate transitions between the system's various stationary solutions. We study the role of fluctuations on the stability of the system in the long-time limit and find no distinction between quantum and classical DTCs. This allows us to probe the fluctuations in an experiment using two strongly coupled parametric resonators subject to classical noise.

  1 citation

• Energy magnetization and transport in systems with a non-zero Berry curvature in a magnetic field

  Archisman Panigrahi, Subroto Mukerjee

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 052 (2023) · published 31 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We demonstrate that the well-known expression for the charge magnetization of a sample with a non-zero Berry curvature can be obtained by demanding that the Einstein relation holds for the electric transport current. We extend this formalism to the transport energy current and show that the energy magnetization must satisfy a particular condition. We provide a physical interpretation of this condition, and relate the energy magnetization to circulating energy currents in Chern insulators due to chiral edge states. We further recover the expression for the energy magnetization with this alternative formalism. We also solve the Boltzmann Transport Equation for the non-equilibrium distribution function in 2D for systems with a non-zero Berry curvature in a magnetic field. This distribution function can be used to obtain the regular Hall response in time-reversal invariant samples with a non-zero Berry curvature, for which there is no anomalous Hall response.

• Measurement phase transitions in the no-click limit as quantum phase transitions of a non-hermitean vacuum

  Caterina Zerba, Alessandro Silva

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 051 (2023) · published 18 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study dynamical phase transitions occurring in the stationary state of the dynamics of integrable many-body non-hermitian Hamiltonians, which can be either realized as a no-click limit of a stochastic Schrödinger equation or using spacetime duality of quantum circuits. In two specific models, the Transverse Field Ising Chain and the Long Range Kitaev Chain, we observe that the entanglement phase transitions occurring in the stationary state have the same nature as that occurring in the vacuum of the non-hermitian Hamiltonian: bounded entanglement entropy when the imaginary part of the quasi-particle spectrum is gapped and a logarithmic growth for gapless imaginary spectrum. This observation suggests the possibility to generalize the area-law theorem to non-Hermitian Hamiltonians.

  6 citations

• A symbol and coaction for higher-loop sunrise integrals

  Andreas Forum, Matt von Hippel

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 050 (2023) · published 12 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We construct a symbol and coaction for the $l$-loop sunrise family of integrals, both for equal-mass and generic-mass cases. These constitute the first concrete examples of symbols and coactions for integrals involving Calabi-Yau threefolds and higher. In order to achieve a symbol of finite length, we recast the differential equations satisfied by these integrals in a unipotent form. We augment the integrals in a natural way by including ratios of maximal cuts $\tau_i$. We discuss the relationship of this construction to constructions of symbols and coactions for multiple polylogarithms and elliptic multiple polylogarithms, and its connection to notions of transcendental weight.