Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Puzzles and pitfalls involving Haar-typicality in holography

  Ning Bao, Aidan Chatwin-Davies

  SciPost Phys. 4, 033 (2018) · published 19 June 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Holographic states that have a well-defined geometric dual in AdS/CFT are not faithfully represented by Haar-typical states in finite-dimensional models. As such, trying to apply principles and lessons from Haar-random ensembles of states to holographic states can lead to apparent puzzles and contradictions. We point out a handful of these pitfalls.

  1 citation

• Space-time first-order correlations of an open Bose Hubbard model with incoherent pump and loss

  Martina Zündel, Leonardo Mazza, Léonie Canet, Anna Minguzzi

  SciPost Phys. 18, 095 (2025) · published 17 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the correlation properties in the steady state of driven-dissipative interacting bosonic systems in the quantum regime, as for example non-linear photonic cavities. Specifically, we consider the Bose-Hubbard model on a periodic chain and with spatially homogeneous one-body loss and pump within the Markovian approximation. The steady state is non-thermal and is formally equivalent to an infinite-temperature state with finite chemical potential set by the dissipative parameters. While there is no effect of interactions on the steady state, we observe a nontrivial behaviour of the space-time two-point correlation function, obtained by exact diagonalisation. In particular, we find that the decay width of the propagator is not only renormalised at increasing interactions, as it is the case of a single non-linear resonator, but also at increasing hopping strength. Furthermore, we numerically predict at large interactions a plateau value of the decay rate which goes beyond perturbative results in the interaction strength. We then compute the full spectral function, finding that it contains both a dispersive free-particle like dispersion at low energy and a doublon branch at energy corresponding to the on-site interactions. We compare with the corresponding calculation for the ground state of a closed quantum system and show that the driven-dissipative nature – determining both the steady state and the dynamical evolution – changes the low-lying part of the spectrum, where noticeably, the dispersion is quadratic instead of linear at small wavevectors. Finally, we compare to a high temperature grand-canonical equilibrium state and show the difference with respect to the open system stemming from the additional degree of freedom of the dissipation that allows one to vary the width of the dispersion lines.

  1 citation

• 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.

  1 citation

• Conformal geometry from entanglement

  Isaac H. Kim, Xiang Li, Ting-Chun Lin, John McGreevy, Bowen Shi

  SciPost Phys. 18, 102 (2025) · published 19 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In a physical system with conformal symmetry, observables depend on cross-ratios, measures of distance invariant under global conformal transformations (conformal geometry for short). We identify a quantum information-theoretic mechanism by which the conformal geometry emerges at the gapless edge of a 2+1D quantum many-body system with a bulk energy gap. We introduce a novel pair of information-theoretic quantities $(\mathfrak{c}_{\textrm{tot}}, \eta)$ that can be defined locally on the edge from the wavefunction of the many-body system, without prior knowledge of any distance measure. We posit that, for a topological groundstate, the quantity $\mathfrak{c}_{\textrm{tot}}$ is stationary under arbitrary variations of the quantum state, and study the logical consequences. We show that stationarity, modulo an entanglement-based assumption about the bulk, implies (i) $\mathfrak{c}_{\textrm{tot}}$ is a non-negative constant that can be interpreted as the total central charge of the edge theory. (ii) $\eta$ is a cross-ratio, obeying the full set of mathematical consistency rules, which further indicates the existence of a distance measure of the edge with global conformal invariance. Thus, the conformal geometry emerges from a simple assumption on groundstate entanglement. We show that stationarity of $\mathfrak{c}_{\textrm{tot}}$ is equivalent to a vector fixed-point equation involving $\eta$, making our assumption locally checkable. We also derive similar results for 1+1D systems under a suitable set of assumptions.

  1 citation

• General simulation method for spontaneous parametric down- and parametric up-conversion experiments

  Felix Riexinger, Mirco Kutas, Björn Haase, Patricia Bickert, Daniel Molter, Michael Bortz, Georg von Freymann

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 022 (2023) · published 29 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) sources are an important technology for quantum sensing and imaging. We demonstrate a general simulation method, based on modeling from first principles, reproducing the spectrally and spatially resolved absolute counts of a SPDC experiment. By additionally simulating parametric up- and down-conversion processes with thermal photons as well as effects of the optical system we accomplish good agreement with the experimental results. This method is broadly applicable and allows for the separation of contributing processes, virtual characterization of SPDC sources, and enables the simulation of many quantum based applications.

  1 citation

• Constant-time quantum algorithm for homology detection in closed curves

  Nhat A. Nghiem Vu, Xianfeng David Gu, Tzu-Chieh Wei

  SciPost Phys. 15, 049 (2023) · published 4 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Given a loop or more generally 1-cycle $r$ of size L on a closed two-dimensional manifold or surface, represented by a triangulated mesh, a question in computational topology asks whether or not it is homologous to zero. We frame and tackle this problem in the quantum setting. Given an oracle that one can use to query the inclusion of edges on a closed curve, we design a quantum algorithm for such a homology detection with a constant running time, with respect to the size or the number of edges on the loop $r$, requiring only a single usage of oracle. In contrast, classical algorithm requires $\Omega(L)$ oracle usage, followed by a linear time processing and can be improved to logarithmic by using a parallel algorithm. Our quantum algorithm can be extended to check whether two closed loops belong to the same homology class. Furthermore, it can be applied to a specific problem in the homotopy detection, namely, checking whether two curves are not homotopically equivalent on a closed two-dimensional manifold.

  1 citation

• Radiation statistics of a degenerate parametric oscillator at threshold

  Fabian Hassler, Steven Kim, Lisa Arndt

  SciPost Phys. 14, 156 (2023) · published 15 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  As a function of the driving strength, a degenerate parametric oscillator exhibits an instability at which spontaneous oscillations occur. Close to threshold, both the nonlinearity as well as fluctuations are vital to the accurate description of the dynamics. We study the statistics of the adiation that is emitted by the degenerate parametric oscillator at threshold. For a weak nonlinearity, we can employ a quasiclassical description. We identify a universal Liouvillian that captures the relevant long-time dynamics for large photon-numbers. We find that the cumulants obey a universal power-law scaling as a function of the nonlinearity. The Fano factor shows a maximum close, but not coinciding, with the threshold. Moreover, we predict a certain ratio of the first three cumulants to be independent of the microscopic details of the system and connect the results to experimental platforms.

  1 citation

• Neural quantum state study of fracton models

  Marc Machaczek, Lode Pollet, Ke Liu

  SciPost Phys. 18, 112 (2025) · published 28 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Fracton models host unconventional topological orders in three and higher dimensions and provide promising candidates for quantum memory platforms. Understanding their robustness against quantum fluctuations is an important task but also poses great challenges due to the lack of efficient numerical tools. In this work, we establish neural quantum states (NQS) as new tools to study phase transitions in these models. Exact and efficient parametrizations are derived for three prototypical fracton codes — the checkerboard and X-cube model, as well as Haah's code — both in terms of a restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) and a correlation-enhanced RBM. We then adapt the correlation-enhanced RBM architecture to a perturbed checkerboard model and reveal its strong first-order phase transition between the fracton phase and a trivial field-polarizing phase. To this end, we simulate this highly entangled system on lattices of up to 512 qubits with high accuracy, representing a cutting-edge application of variational neural-network methods. In addition, we reproduce the phase transition of the X-cube model previously obtained with quantum Monte Carlo and high-order series expansion methods. Our work demonstrates the remarkable potential of NQS in studying complicated three-dimensional problems and highlights physics-oriented constructions of NQS architectures.

  1 citation

• Entropic analysis of optomechanical entanglement for a nanomechanical resonator coupled to an optical cavity field

  Jeong Ryeol Choi

  SciPost Phys. Core 4, 024 (2021) · published 20 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate entanglement dynamics for a nanomechanical resonator coupled to an optical cavity field through the analysis of the associated entanglement entropies. The effects of time variation of several parameters, such as the optical frequency and the coupling strength, on the evolution of entanglement entropies are analyzed. We consider three kinds of entanglement entropies as the measures of the entanglement of subsystems, which are the linear entropy, the von Neumann entropy, and the Renyi entropy. The analytic formulae of these entropies are derived in a rigorous way using wave functions of the system. In particular, we focus on time behaviors of entanglement entropies in the case where the optical frequency is modulated by a small oscillating factor. We show that the entanglement entropies emerge and increase as the coupling strength grows from zero. The entanglement entropies fluctuate depending on the adiabatic variation of the parameters and such fluctuations are significant especially in the strong coupling regime. Our research may deepen the understanding of the optomechanical entanglement, which is crucial in realizing hybrid quantum-information protocols in quantum computation, quantum networks, and other domains in quantum science.

  1 citation

• Equal-time approach to real-time dynamics of quantum fields

  Robert Ott, Torsten V. Zache, Jürgen Berges

  SciPost Phys. 14, 011 (2023) · published 1 February 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We employ the equal-time formulation of quantum field theory to derive effective kinetic theories, first for a weakly coupled non-relativistic Bose gas, and then for a strongly correlated system of self-interacting $N$-component fields. Our results provide the link between state-of-the-art measurements of equal-time effective actions using quantum simulator platforms, as employed in [Phys. Rev. X 10, 011020 (2020); Nat. Phys. 16, 1012 (2020)], and observables underlying effective kinetic or hydrodynamic descriptions. New non-perturbative approximation schemes can be developed and certified this way, where the a priori time-local formulation of the equal-time effective action has crucial advantages over the conventional closed-time-path approach which is non-local in time.

  1 citation