Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Toward a 3d Ising model with a weakly-coupled string theory dual

  Nabil Iqbal, John McGreevy

  SciPost Phys. 9, 019 (2020) · published 13 August 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  It has long been expected that the 3d Ising model can be thought of as a string theory, where one interprets the domain walls that separate up spins from down spins as two-dimensional string worldsheets. The usual Ising Hamiltonian measures the area of these domain walls. This theory has string coupling of unit magnitude. We add new local terms to the Ising Hamiltonian that further weight each spin configuration by a factor depending on the genus of the corresponding domain wall, resulting in a new 3d Ising model that has a tunable bare string coupling $g_s$. We use a combination of analytical and numerical methods to analyze the phase structure of this model as $g_s$ is varied. We study statistical properties of the topology of worldsheets and discuss the prospects of using this new deformation at weak string coupling to find a worldsheet description of the 3d Ising transition.

  16 citations

• Weak ergodicity breaking in non-Hermitian many-body systems

  Qianqian Chen, Shuai A. Chen, Zheng Zhu

  SciPost Phys. 15, 052 (2023) · published 7 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The recent discovery of persistent revivals in the Rydberg-atom quantum simulator has revealed a weakly ergodicity-breaking mechanism dubbed quantum many-body scars, which are a set of nonthermal states embedded in otherwise thermal spectra. Until now, such a mechanism has been mainly studied in Hermitian systems. Here, we establish the non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars and systematically characterize their nature from dynamic revivals, entanglement entropy, physical observables, and energy level statistics. Notably, we find the non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars exhibit significantly enhanced coherent revival dynamics when approaching the exceptional point. The signatures of non-Hermitian scars switch from the real-energy axis to the imaginary-energy axis after a real-to-complex spectrum transition driven by increasing non-Hermiticity, where an exceptional point and a quantum tricritical point emerge simultaneously. We further examine the stability of non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars against external fields, reveal the non-Hermitian quantum criticality and eventually set up the whole phase diagram. The possible connection to the open quantum many-body systems is also explored. Our findings offer insights for realizing long-lived coherent states in non-Hermitian many-body systems.

  16 citations

• Finite-temperature symmetric tensor network for spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnets on the square lattice

  Didier Poilblanc, Matthieu Mambrini, Fabien Alet

  SciPost Phys. 10, 019 (2021) · published 28 January 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Within the tensor network framework, the (positive) thermal density operator can be approximated by a double layer of infinite Projected Entangled Pair Operator (iPEPO) coupled via ancilla degrees of freedom. To investigate the thermal properties of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the square lattice, we introduce a family of fully spin-$SU(2)$ and lattice-$C_{4v}$ symmetric on-site tensors (of bond dimensions $D=4$ or $D=7$) and a plaquette-based Trotter-Suzuki decomposition of the imaginary-time evolution operator. A variational optimization is performed on the plaquettes, using a full (for $D=4$) or simple (for $D=7$) environment obtained from the single-site Corner Transfer Matrix Renormalization Group fixed point. The method is benchmarked by a comparison to quantum Monte Carlo in the thermodynamic limit. Although the iPEPO spin correlation length starts to deviate from the exact exponential growth for inverse-temperature $\beta \gtrsim 2$, the behavior of various observables turns out to be quite accurate once plotted w.r.t the inverse correlation length. We also find that a direct $T=0$ variational energy optimization provides results in full agreement with the $\beta\rightarrow\infty$ limit of finite-temperature data, hence validating the imaginary-time evolution procedure. Extension of the method to frustrated models is described and preliminary results are shown.

  16 citations

• A gauge theory for shallow water

  David Tong

  SciPost Phys. 14, 102 (2023) · published 9 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The shallow water equations describe the horizontal flow of a thin layer of fluid with varying height. We show that the equations can be rewritten as a $d=2+1$ dimensional Abelian gauge theory. The magnetic field corresponds to the conserved height of the fluid, while the electric charge corresponds to the conserved vorticity. In a certain linearised approximation, the shallow water equations reduce to relativistic Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory. This describes Poincaré waves. The chiral edge modes of the theory are identified as coastal Kelvin waves.

  16 citations

• Realizing triality and $p$-ality by lattice twisted gauging in (1+1)d quantum spin systems

  Da-Chuan Lu, Zhengdi Sun, Yi-Zhuang You

  SciPost Phys. 17, 136 (2024) · published 15 November 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this paper, we study the twisted gauging on the (1+1)d lattice and construct various non-local mappings on the lattice operators. To be specific, we define the twisted Gauss law operator and implement the twisted gauging of the finite group on the lattice motivated by the orbifolding procedure in the conformal field theory, which involves the data of non-trivial element in the second cohomology group of the gauge group. We show the twisted gauging is equivalent to the two-step procedure of first applying the SPT entangler and then untwisted gauging. We use the twisted gauging to construct the triality (order 3) and $p$-ality (order $p$) mapping on the $\mathbb{Z}_p× \mathbb{Z}_p$ symmetric Hamiltonians, where $p$ is a prime. Such novel non-local mappings generalize Kramers-Wannier duality and they preserve the locality of symmetric operators but map charged operators to non-local ones. We further construct quantum process to realize these non-local mappings and analyze the induced mappings on the phase diagrams. For theories that are invariant under these non-local mappings, they admit the corresponding non-invertible symmetries. The non-invertible symmetry will constrain the theory at the multicritical point between the gapped phases. We further give the condition when the non-invertible symmetry can have symmetric gapped phase with a unique ground state.

  16 citations

• HarmonicBalance.jl: A Julia suite for nonlinear dynamics using harmonic balance

  Jan Košata, Javier del Pino, Toni L. Heugel, Oded Zilberberg

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 6 (2022) · published 24 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  HarmonicBalance.jl is a publicly available Julia package designed to simplify and solve systems of periodic time-dependent nonlinear ordinary differential equations. Time dependence of the system parameters is treated with the harmonic balance method, which approximates the system's behaviour as a set of harmonic terms with slowly-varying amplitudes. Under this approximation, the set of all possible steady-state responses follows from the solution of a polynomial system. In HarmonicBalance.jl, we combine harmonic balance with contemporary implementations of symbolic algebra and the homotopy continuation method to numerically determine all steady-state solutions and their associated fluctuation dynamics. For the exploration of involved steady-state topologies, we provide a simple graphical user interface, allowing for arbitrary solution observables and phase diagrams. HarmonicBalance.jl is a free software available at https://github.com/NonlinearOscillations/HarmonicBalance.jl.

  15 citations

• Long-term memory magnetic correlations in the Hubbard model: A dynamical mean-field theory analysis

  Clemens Watzenböck, Martina Fellinger, Karsten Held, Alessandro Toschi

  SciPost Phys. 12, 184 (2022) · published 7 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the onset of a not-decaying asymptotic behavior of temporal magnetic correlations in the Hubbard model in infinite dimensions. This long-term memory feature of dynamical spin correlations can be precisely quantified by computing the difference between the zero-frequency limit of the Kubo susceptibility and the corresponding static isothermal one. Here, we present a procedure for reliably evaluating this difference starting from imaginary time-axis data, and apply it to the testbed case of the Mott-Hubbard metal-insulator transition (MIT). At low temperatures, we find long-term memory effects in the entire Mott regime, abruptly ending at the first order MIT. This directly reflects the underlying local moment physics and the associated degeneracy in the many-electron spectrum. At higher temperatures, a more gradual onset of an infinitely-long time-decay of magnetic correlations occurs in the crossover regime, not too far from the Widom line emerging from the critical point of the MIT. Our work has relevant algorithmic implications for the analytical continuation of dynamical susceptibilities in strongly correlated regimes and offers a new perspective for unveiling fundamental properties of the many-particle spectrum of the problem under scrutiny.

  15 citations

• Completeness of the Bethe states for the rational, spin-1/2 Richardson-Gaudin system

  Jon Links

  SciPost Phys. 3, 007 (2017) · published 28 July 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Establishing the completeness of a Bethe Ansatz solution for an exactly solved model is a perennial challenge, which is typically approached on a case by case basis. For the rational, spin-1/2 Richardson--Gaudin system it will be argued that, for generic values of the system's coupling parameters, the Bethe states are complete. This method does not depend on knowledge of the distribution of Bethe roots, such as a string hypothesis, and is generalisable to a wider class of systems.

  15 citations

• Strong Hilbert space fragmentation via emergent quantum drums in two dimensions

  Anwesha Chattopadhyay, Bhaskar Mukherjee, Krishnendu Sengupta, Arnab Sen

  SciPost Phys. 14, 146 (2023) · published 7 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce a disorder-free model of $S=1/2$ spins on the square lattice in a constrained Hilbert space where two up-spins are not allowed simultaneously on any two neighboring sites of the lattice. The interactions are given by ring-exchange terms on elementary plaquettes that conserve both the total magnetization as well as dipole moment. We show that this model provides a tractable example of strong Hilbert space fragmentation in two dimensions with typical initial states evading thermalization with respect to the full Hilbert space. Given any product state, the system can be decomposed into disjoint spatial regions made of edge and/or vertex sharing plaquettes that we dub as "quantum drums". These quantum drums come in many shapes and sizes and specifying the plaquettes that belong to a drum fixes its spectrum. The spectra of some small drums is calculated analytically. We study two bigger quasi-one-dimensional drums numerically, dubbed "wire" and a "junction of two wires" respectively. We find that these possess a chaotic spectrum but also support distinct families of quantum many-body scars that cause periodic revivals from different initial states. The wire is shown to be equivalent to the one-dimensional PXP chain with open boundaries, a paradigmatic model for quantum many-body scarring; while the junction of two wires represents a distinct constrained model.

  15 citations

• Automated construction of $U(1)$-invariant matrix-product operators from graph representations

  Sebastian Paeckel, Thomas Köhler, Salvatore R. Manmana

  SciPost Phys. 3, 035 (2017) · published 17 November 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present an algorithmic construction scheme for matrix-product-operator (MPO) representations of arbitrary $U(1)$-invariant operators whenever there is an expression of the local structure in terms of a finite-states machine (FSM). Given a set of local operators as building blocks, the method automatizes two major steps when constructing a $U(1)$-invariant MPO representation: (i) the bookkeeping of auxiliary bond-index shifts arising from the application of operators changing the local quantum numbers and (ii) the appearance of phase factors due to particular commutation rules. The automatization is achieved by post-processing the operator strings generated by the FSM. Consequently, MPO representations of various types of $U(1)$-invariant operators can be constructed generically in MPS algorithms reducing the necessity of expensive MPO arithmetics. This is demonstrated by generating arbitrary products of operators in terms of FSM, from which we obtain exact MPO representations for the variance of the Hamiltonian of a $S=1$ Heisenberg chain.

  15 citations