Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Continuous gaussian measurements of the free boson CFT: A model for exactly solvable and detectable measurement-induced dynamics

  Y. Minoguchi, P. Rabl, M. Buchhold

  SciPost Phys. 12, 009 (2022) · published 7 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Hybrid evolution protocols, composed of unitary dynamics and repeated, weak or projective measurements, give rise to new, intriguing quantum phenomena, including entanglement phase transitions and unconventional conformal invariance. Defying the complications imposed by the non-linear and stochastic nature of the measurement process, we introduce a scenario of measurement-induced many body evolution, which possesses an exact analytical solution: bosonic Gaussian measurements. The evolution features a competition between the continuous observation of linear boson operators and a free Hamiltonian, and it is characterized by a unique and exactly solvable covariance matrix. Within this framework, we then consider an elementary model for quantum criticality, the free boson conformal field theory, and investigate in which way criticality is modified under measurements. Depending on the measurement protocol, we distinguish three fundamental scenarios (a) enriched quantum criticality, characterized by a logarithmic entanglement growth with a floating prefactor, or the loss of criticality, indicated by an entanglement growth with either (b) an area-law or (c) a volume-law. For each scenario, we discuss the impact of imperfect measurements, which reduce the purity of the wavefunction and are equivalent to Markovian decoherence, and present a set of observables, e.g., real-space correlations, the relaxation time, and the entanglement structure, to classify the measurement-induced dynamics for both pure and mixed states. Finally, we present an experimental tomography scheme, which grants access to the density operator of the system by using the continuous measurement record only.

  44 citations

• Hydrodynamics in lattice models with continuous non-Abelian symmetries

  Paolo Glorioso, Luca V. Delacrétaz, Xiao Chen, Rahul M. Nandkishore, Andrew Lucas

  SciPost Phys. 10, 015 (2021) · published 25 January 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We develop a systematic effective field theory of hydrodynamics for many-body systems on the lattice with global continuous non-Abelian symmetries. Models with continuous non-Abelian symmetries are ubiquitous in physics, arising in diverse settings ranging from hot nuclear matter to cold atomic gases and quantum spin chains. In every dimension and for every flavor symmetry group, the low energy theory is a set of coupled noisy diffusion equations. Independence of the physics on the choice of canonical or microcanonical ensemble is manifest in our hydrodynamic expansion, even though the ensemble choice causes an apparent shift in quasinormal mode spectra. We use our formalism to explain why flavor symmetry is qualitatively different from hydrodynamics with other non-Abelian conservation laws, including angular momentum and charge multipoles. As a significant application of our framework, we study spin and energy diffusion in classical one-dimensional SU(2)-invariant spin chains, including the Heisenberg model along with multiple generalizations. We argue based on both numerical simulations and our effective field theory framework that non-integrable spin chains on a lattice exhibit conventional spin diffusion, in contrast to some recent predictions that diffusion constants grow logarithmically at late times. We show that the apparent enhancement of diffusion is due to slow equilibration caused by (non-Abelian) hydrodynamic fluctuations.

  44 citations

• Classification of out-of-time-order correlators

  Felix M. Haehl, R. Loganayagam, Prithvi Narayan, Mukund Rangamani

  SciPost Phys. 6, 001 (2019) · published 7 January 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The space of n-point correlation functions, for all possible time-orderings of operators, can be computed by a non-trivial path integral contour, which depends on how many time-ordering violations are present in the correlator. These contours, which have come to be known as timefolds, or out-of-time-order (OTO) contours, are a natural generalization of the Schwinger-Keldysh contour (which computes singly out-of-time-ordered correlation functions). We provide a detailed discussion of such higher OTO functional integrals, explaining their general structure, and the myriad ways in which a particular correlation function may be encoded in such contours. Our discussion may be seen as a natural generalization of the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism to higher OTO correlation functions. We provide explicit illustration for low point correlators (n=2,3,4) to exemplify the general statements.

  44 citations

• A conformal bootstrap approach to critical percolation in two dimensions

  Marco Picco, Sylvain Ribault, Raoul Santachiara

  SciPost Phys. 1, 009 (2016) · published 27 October 2016 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study four-point functions of critical percolation in two dimensions, and more generally of the Potts model. We propose an exact ansatz for the spectrum: an infinite, discrete and non-diagonal combination of representations of the Virasoro algebra. Based on this ansatz, we compute four-point functions using a numerical conformal bootstrap approach. The results agree with Monte-Carlo computations of connectivities of random clusters.

  44 citations

• The fate of discrete 1-form symmetries in 6d

  Fabio Apruzzi, Markus Dierigl, Ling Lin

  SciPost Phys. 12, 047 (2022) · published 1 February 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Recently introduced generalized global symmetries have been useful in order to understand non-perturbative aspects of quantum field theories in four and lower dimensions. In this paper we focus on 1-form symmetries of weakly coupled 6d supersymmetric gauge theories coupled to dynamical tensor multiplets. We study the consistency of global 1-form symmetries corresponding to the center of the gauge groups, or subgroups thereof, by activating their background fields, which makes the instanton density fractional. In 6d, an instanton background for a given gauge theory sources BPS strings via tadpole cancelation. The non-trivial 1-form symmetry background configurations contribute to the charge of the BPS strings. However, Dirac quantization imposes restrictions on the consistent 1-form backgrounds, since they can in general lead to and induce fractional charges, thus making (part of) the putative higher-form symmetry inconsistent. This gives explicit criteria to determine whether the discrete 1-form symmetries are realized. We implement these criteria in concrete examples originating from string compactifications. We also corroborate this by finding that a non-trivial fractional contribution is related to states which explicitly break the global 1-form symmetry appearing as massive excitations of the 6d BPS strings. For 6d theories consistently coupled to gravity, this hints at a symmetry breaking tower of states. When the fractional contributions are absent, the F-theory realization of the theories points to the gauging of the 1-form symmetry via the presence of non-trivial Mordell--Weil torsion.

  44 citations

• Islands for entanglement negativity

  Jaydeep Kumar Basak, Debarshi Basu, Vinay Malvimat, Himanshu Parihar, Gautam Sengupta

  SciPost Phys. 12, 003 (2022) · published 5 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We advance two alternative proposals for the island contributions to the entanglement negativity of various pure and mixed state configurations in quantum field theories coupled to semiclassical gravity. The first construction involves the extremization of an algebraic sum of the generalized Renyi entropies of order half. The second proposal involves the extremization of the sum of the effective entanglement negativity of quantum matter fields and the backreacted area of a cosmic brane spanning the entanglement wedge cross section which also extremizes the generalized Renyi reflected entropy of order half. These proposals are utilized to obtain the island contributions to the entanglement negativity of various pure and mixed state configurations involving the bath systems coupled to extremal and non-extremal black holes in JT gravity demonstrating an exact match with each other. Furthermore, the results from both the proposals match precisely with the island contribution to half the Renyi reflected entropy of order half providing a strong consistency check. We then allude to a possible doubly holographic picture of our island proposals and provide a derivation of the first proposal by determining the corresponding replica wormhole contributions.

  44 citations

• Quantum Bose-Fermi droplets

  Debraj Rakshit, Tomasz Karpiuk, Mirosław Brewczyk, Mariusz Gajda

  SciPost Phys. 6, 079 (2019) · published 28 June 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the stability of a zero temperature mixture of attractively interacting degenerate bosons and spin-polarized fermions in the absence of confinement. We demonstrate that higher order corrections to the standard mean-field energy can lead to a formation of Bose-Fermi liquid droplets -- self-bound systems in three-dimensional space. The stability analysis of the homogeneous case is supported by numerical simulations of finite systems by explicit inclusion of surface effects. We discuss the experimental feasibility of formation of quantum droplets and indicate the main obstacle -- inelastic three-body collisions.

  44 citations

• The Virasoro minimal string

  Scott Collier, Lorenz Eberhardt, Beatrix Mühlmann, Victor A. Rodriguez

  SciPost Phys. 16, 057 (2024) · published 26 February 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce a critical string theory in two dimensions and demonstrate that this theory, viewed as two-dimensional quantum gravity on the worldsheet, is equivalent to a double-scaled matrix integral. The worldsheet theory consists of Liouville CFT with central charge c$≥$ 25 coupled to timelike Liouville CFT with central charge 26-c. The double-scaled matrix integral has as its leading density of states the universal Cardy density of primaries in a two-dimensional CFT, thus motivating the name Virasoro minimal string. The duality holds for any value of the continuous parameter $c$ and reduces to the JT gravity/matrix integral duality in the large central charge limit. It thus provides a precise stringy realization of JT gravity. The main observables of the Virasoro minimal string are quantum analogues of the Weil-Petersson volumes, which are computed as absolutely convergent integrals of worldsheet CFT correlators over the moduli space of Riemann surfaces. By exploiting a relation of the Virasoro minimal string to three-dimensional gravity and intersection theory on the moduli space of Riemann surfaces, we are able to give a direct derivation of the duality. We provide many checks, such as explicit numerical - and in special cases, analytic - integration of string diagrams, the identification of the CFT boundary conditions with asymptotic boundaries of the two-dimensional spacetime, and the matching between the leading non-perturbative corrections of the worldsheet theory and the matrix integral. As a byproduct, we discover natural conformal boundary conditions for timelike Liouville CFT.

  44 citations

• Time-dependent study of disordered models with infinite projected entangled pair states

  Claudius Hubig, J. Ignacio Cirac

  SciPost Phys. 6, 031 (2019) · published 11 March 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Infinite projected entangled pair states (iPEPS), the tensor network ansatz for two-dimensional systems in the thermodynamic limit, already provide excellent results on ground-state quantities using either imaginary-time evolution or variational optimisation. Here, we show (i) the feasibility of real-time evolution in iPEPS to simulate the dynamics of an infinite system after a global quench and (ii) the application of disorder-averaging to obtain translationally invariant systems in the presence of disorder. To illustrate the approach, we study the short-time dynamics of the square lattice Heisenberg model in the presence of a bi-valued disorder field.

  43 citations

• Holographic thermal correlators from supersymmetric instantons

  Matthew Dodelson, Alba Grassi, Cristoforo Iossa, Daniel Panea Lichtig, Alexander Zhiboedov

  SciPost Phys. 14, 116 (2023) · published 16 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present an exact formula for the thermal scalar two-point function in four-dimensional holographic conformal field theories. The problem of finding it reduces to the analysis of the wave equation on the AdS-Schwarzschild background. The two-point function is computed from the connection coefficients of the Heun equation, which can be expressed in terms of the Nekrasov-Shatashvili partition function of an $SU(2)$ supersymmetric gauge theory with four fundamental hypermultiplets. The result is amenable to numerical evaluation upon truncating the number of instantons in the convergent expansion of the partition function. We also examine it analytically in various limits. At large spin the instanton expansion of the thermal two-point function directly maps to the light-cone bootstrap analysis of the heavy-light four-point function. Using this connection, we compute the OPE data of heavy-light double-twist operators. We compare our prediction to the perturbative results available in the literature and find perfect agreement.

  43 citations