Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Entanglement, partial set of measurements, and diagonality of the density matrix in the parton model

  Haowu Duan

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 160 (2022) · published 14 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  To study quantum properties of the hadron wavefunction at small x, we derived the reduced density matrix for soft gluons in the CGC framework. We explicitly showed that the reduced density matrix is not diagonal in the particle number basis. The off-diagonal components are usually ignored in the conventional parton model. We thus defined the density matrix of ignorance by keeping only the part of the reduced density matrix which can be probed in a limited set of experimental measurements. We calculated Von Neumann entropy for both the reduced and ignorance density matrices. The entropy of ignorance is always greater than the entanglement entropy (computed drom the reduced density matrix) of gluons. Finally, we showed that the CGC reduced density matrix for soft gluons can be diagonalized in a thermal basis with Boltzmann weights suggesting thermalization of new quasi-particle states which we dubbed entangolons.

  1 citation

• 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.

  1 citation

• Plea for the use of the exact Stirling formula in statistical mechanics

  Didier Lairez

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 76 (2023) · published 30 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In statistical mechanics, the generally called Stirling approximation is actually an approximation of Stirling's formula. In this article, it is shown that the term that is dropped is in fact the one that takes fluctuations into account. The use of the Stirling's exact formula forces us to reintroduce them into the already proposed solutions of well-know puzzles such as the extensivity paradox or the Gibbs' paradox of joining two volumes of identical gas. This amendment clearly results in a gain in consistency and rigor of these solutions.

  1 citation

• Effective description of non-equilibrium currents in cold magnetized plasma

  Nabil Iqbal

  SciPost Phys. 12, 078 (2022) · published 28 February 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The dynamics of cold strongly magnetized plasma -- traditionally the domain of force-free electrodynamics -- has recently been reformulated in terms of symmetries and effective field theory, where the degrees of freedom are the momentum and magnetic flux carried by a fluid of cold strings. In physical applications where the electron mass can be neglected one might expect the presence of extra light charged modes -- electrons in the lowest Landau level -- propagating parallel to the magnetic field lines. We construct an effective description of such electric charges, describing their interaction with plasma degrees of freedom in terms of a new collective mode that can be thought of as a bosonization of the electric charge density along each field line. In this framework QED phenomena such as charged pair production and the axial anomaly are described at the classical level. Formally, our construction corresponds to gauging a particular part of the higher form symmetry associated with magnetic flux conservation. We study some simple applications of our effective theory, showing that the scattering of magnetosonic modes generically creates particles and that the rotating Michel monopole is now surrounded by a cloud of electric charge.

  1 citation

• Topological defects in a double-mirror quadrupole insulator displace diverging charge

  Isidora Araya Day, Anton R. Akhmerov, Dániel Varjas

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 053 (2022) · published 15 December 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We show that topological defects in quadrupole insulators do not host quantized fractional charges, contrary to what their Wannier representation indicates. In particular, we test the charge quantization hypothesis based on the Wannier representation of a disclination and a parametric defect. Since disclinations necessarily strain the lattice and parametric defects require closed curves in parameter space, both defects break four-fold rotation symmetry, even away from their origin. The Wannier representation of the defects is thus determined by local reflection symmetries. Contrary to the hypothesis, we find that the local charge density decays as $\sim 1/r^2$ with distance, leading to a diverging defect charge. Because topological defects are incompatible with four-fold rotation symmetry, we conclude that defect charge quantization is protected by sublattice symmetry, and not higher order topology.

  1 citation

• Recent Highlights from Spin-Physics Experiments

  Caroline Riedl

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 002 (2022) · published 11 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A snapshot of the current experimental status of spin-dependent nucleon structure prior to the arrival of the Electron Ion Collider will be attempted. Highlights of recent results from fixed-target experiments at JLab, Fermilab, CERN and DESY and collider experiments from RHIC are presented. Many of the recent results address the topics of transverse proton or parton spin and transverse parton momenta (TMDs), and their their (spin-orbit) correlations. Results on generalized parton distributions (GPDs), which provide an alternative pathway to mapping nucleon structure, are also discussed.

  1 citation

• A NEAT quantum error decoder

  Hugo Théveniaut, Evert van Nieuwenburg

  SciPost Phys. 11, 005 (2021) · published 12 July 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the use of the evolutionary NEAT algorithm for the optimization of a policy network that performs quantum error decoding on the toric code, with bitflip and depolarizing noise, one qubit at a time. We find that these NEAT-optimized network decoders have similar performance to previously reported machine-learning based decoders, but use roughly three to four orders of magnitude fewer parameters to do so.

  1 citation

• Probing pair correlations in Fermi gases with Ramsey-Bragg interferometry

  Théo Malas-Danzé, Alexandre Dugelay, Nir Navon, Hadrien Kurkjian

  SciPost Phys. 17, 024 (2024) · published 29 July 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We propose an interferometric method to probe pair correlations in a gas of spin-$1/2$ fermions. The method consists of a Ramsey sequence where both spin states of the Fermi gas are set in a superposition of a state at rest and a state with a large recoil velocity. The two-body density matrix is extracted via the fluctuations of the transferred fraction to the recoiled state. In the pair-condensed phase, the off-diagonal long-range order is directly reflected in the asymptotic behavior of the interferometric signal for long interrogation times. The method also allows to probe the spatial structure of the condensed pairs: the interferometric signal is an oscillating function of the interrogation time in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer regime; it becomes an overdamped function in the molecular Bose-Einstein condensate regime.

  1 citation

• Electric polarization and magnetization in metals

  Perry T. Mahon, John E. Sipe

  SciPost Phys. 14, 058 (2023) · published 3 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A feature of the "modern theory" is that electric polarization is not well-defined in a metallic ground state. A different approach invokes the general existence of a complete set of exponentially localized Wannier functions, with respect to which general definitions of microscopic electronic polarization and magnetization fields, and free charge and current densities are always admitted. These definitions assume no particular initial electronic state of the crystal, and the set of microscopic fields satisfy the usual relations of classical electrodynamics. Notably, when applied to a trivial insulator initially occupying its $T=0$ ground state, the expressions for the unperturbed polarization and orbital magnetization, and for the orbital magnetoelectric polarizability tensor obtained from these different approaches can agree. However, the "modern theory of magnetization" has been extended via thermodynamic arguments to include metals and Chern insulators. We here compare with that generalization and find disagreement; the manner in which the expressions differ elucidates the distinct philosophies of these approaches. Our approach leads to the usual electrical conductivity tensor in the long-wavelength limit; in the absence of any scattering mechanisms, the dc divergence of that tensor is due to the free current density and the finite-frequency generalization of the anomalous Hall contribution arises from a combination of bound and free current densities. As well, in the limit that the electronic ground state is that of a trivial insulator, our expressions reduce to those expected for the unperturbed polarization and magnetization, and the electric susceptibility.

  1 citation

• Stochastic series expansion quantum Monte Carlo for Rydberg arrays

  Ejaaz Merali, Isaac J. S. De Vlugt, Roger G. Melko

  SciPost Phys. Core 7, 016 (2024) · published 5 April 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Arrays of Rydberg atoms are a powerful platform to realize strongly-interacting quantum many-body systems. A common Rydberg Hamiltonian is free of the sign problem, meaning that its equilibrium properties are amenable to efficient simulation by quantum Monte Carlo (QMC). In this paper, we develop a Stochastic Series Expansion QMC algorithm for Rydberg atoms interacting on arbitrary lattices. We describe a cluster update that allows for the efficient sampling and calculation of physical observables for typical experimental parameters, and show that the algorithm can reproduce experimental results on large Rydberg arrays in one and two dimensions.

  1 citation