Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Probabilistically violating the first law of thermodynamics in a quantum heat engine

  Timo Kerremans, Peter Samuelsson, Patrick P. Potts

  SciPost Phys. 12, 168 (2022) · published 20 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Fluctuations of thermodynamic observables, such as heat and work, contain relevant information on the underlying physical process. These fluctuations are however not taken into account in the traditional laws of thermodynamics. While the second law is extended to fluctuating systems by the celebrated fluctuation theorems, the first law is generally believed to hold even in the presence of fluctuations. Here we show that in the presence of quantum fluctuations, also the first law of thermodynamics may break down. This happens because quantum mechanics imposes constraints on the knowledge of heat and work. To illustrate our results, we provide a detailed case-study of work and heat fluctuations in a quantum heat engine based on a circuit QED architecture. We find probabilistic violations of the first law and show that they are closely connected to quantum signatures related to negative quasi-probabilities. Our results imply that in the presence of quantum fluctuations, the first law of thermodynamics may not be applicable to individual experimental runs.

  8 citations

• Classical Casimir free energy for two Drude spheres of arbitrary radii: A plane-wave approach

  Tanja Schoger, Gert-Ludwig Ingold

  SciPost Phys. Core 4, 011 (2021) · published 4 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We derive an exact analytic expression for the high-temperature limit of the Casimir interaction between two Drude spheres of arbitrary radii. Specifically, we determine the Casimir free energy by using the scattering approach in the plane-wave basis. Within a round-trip expansion, we are led to consider the combinatorics of certain partitions of the round trips. The relation between the Casimir free energy and the capacitance matrix of two spheres is discussed. Previously known results for the special cases of a sphere-plane geometry as well as two spheres of equal radii are recovered. An asymptotic expansion for small distances between the two spheres is determined and analytical expressions for the coefficients are given.

  8 citations

• Local transformations of multiple multipartite states

  Antoine Neven, David Gunn, Martin Hebenstreit, Barbara Kraus

  SciPost Phys. 11, 042 (2021) · published 30 August 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Understanding multipartite entanglement is vital, as it underpins a wide range of phenomena across physics. The study of transformations of states via Local Operations assisted by Classical Communication (LOCC) allows one to quantitatively analyse entanglement, as it induces a partial order in the Hilbert space. However, it has been shown that, for systems with fixed local dimensions, this order is generically trivial, which prevents relating multipartite states to each other with respect to any entanglement measure. In order to obtain a non-trivial partial ordering, we study a physically motivated extension of LOCC: multi-state LOCC. Here, one considers simultaneous LOCC transformations acting on a finite number of entangled pure states. We study both multipartite and bipartite multi-state transformations. In the multipartite case, we demonstrate that one can change the stochastic LOCC (SLOCC) class of the individual initial states by only applying Local Unitaries (LUs). We show that, by transferring entanglement from one state to the other, one can perform state conversions not possible in the single copy case; provide examples of multipartite entanglement catalysis; and demonstrate improved probabilistic protocols. In the bipartite case, we identify numerous non-trivial LU transformations and show that the source entanglement is not additive. These results demonstrate that multi-state LOCC has a much richer landscape than single-state LOCC.

  8 citations

• A bound on thermal relativistic correlators at large spacelike momenta

  Souvik Banerjee, Kyriakos Papadodimas, Suvrat Raju, Prasant Samantray, Pushkal Shrivastava

  SciPost Phys. 8, 064 (2020) · published 20 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider thermal Wightman correlators in a relativistic quantum field theory in the limit where the spatial momenta of the insertions become large while their frequencies stay fixed. We show that, in this limit, the size of these correlators is bounded by $e^{-\beta R}$, where $R$ is the radius of the smallest sphere that contains the polygon formed by the momenta. We show that perturbative quantum field theories can saturate this bound through suitably high-order loop diagrams. We also consider holographic theories in $d$-spacetime dimensions, where we show that the leading two-point function of generalized free-fields saturates the bound in $d = 2$ and is {\em below} the bound for $d > 2$. We briefly discuss interactions in holographic theories and conclude with a discussion of several open problems.

  8 citations

• A symmetry algebra in double-scaled SYK

  Henry W. Lin, Douglas Stanford

  SciPost Phys. 15, 234 (2023) · published 8 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The double-scaled limit of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model takes the number of fermions and their interaction number to infinity in a coordinated way. In this limit, two entangled copies of the SYK model have a bulk description of sorts known as the "chord Hilbert space". We analyze a symmetry algebra acting on this Hilbert space, generated by the two Hamiltonians together with a two-sided operator known as the chord number. This algebra is a deformation of the JT gravitational algebra, and it contains a subalgebra that is a deformation of the $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ near-horizon symmetries. The subalgebra has finite-dimensional unitary representations corresponding to matter moving around in a discrete Einstein-Rosen bridge. In a semiclassical limit the discreteness disappears and the subalgebra simplifies to $\mathfrak{sl}_2$, but with a non-standard action on the boundary time coordinate. One can make the action of $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ algebra more standard at the cost of extending the boundary circle to include some "fake" portions. Such fake portions also accommodate certain subtle states that survive the semi-classical limit, despite oscillating on the scale of discreteness. We discuss applications of this algebra, including sub-maximal chaos, the traversable wormhole protocol, and a two-sided OPE.

  8 citations

• Accuracy of restricted Boltzmann machines for the one-dimensional $J_1-J_2$ Heisenberg model

  Luciano Loris Viteritti, Francesco Ferrari, Federico Becca

  SciPost Phys. 12, 166 (2022) · published 19 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Neural networks have been recently proposed as variational wave functions for quantum many-body systems [G. Carleo and M. Troyer, Science 355, 602 (2017)]. In this work, we focus on a specific architecture, known as Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM), and analyse its accuracy for the spin-1/2 $J_1-J_2$ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model in one spatial dimension. The ground state of this model has a non-trivial sign structure, especially for $J_2/J_1>0.5$, forcing us to work with complex-valued RBMs. Two variational Ans\"atze are discussed: one defined through a fully complex RBM, and one in which two different real-valued networks are used to approximate modulus and phase of the wave function. In both cases, translational invariance is imposed by considering linear combinations of RBMs, giving access also to the lowest-energy excitations at fixed momentum $k$. We perform a systematic study on small clusters to evaluate the accuracy of these wave functions in comparison to exact results, providing evidence for the supremacy of the fully complex RBM. Our calculations show that this kind of Ans\"atze is very flexible and describes both gapless and gapped ground states, also capturing the incommensurate spin-spin correlations and low-energy spectrum for $J_2/J_1>0.5$. The RBM results are also compared to the ones obtained with Gutzwiller-projected fermionic states, often employed to describe quantum spin models [F. Ferrari, A. Parola, S. Sorella and F. Becca, Phys. Rev. B 97, 235103 (2018)]. Contrary to the latter class of variational states, the fully-connected structure of RBMs hampers the transferability of the wave function from small to large clusters, implying an increase of the computational cost with the system size.

  8 citations

• Tripartite information at long distances

  César A. Agón, Pablo Bueno, Horacio Casini

  SciPost Phys. 12, 153 (2022) · published 10 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We compute the leading term of the tripartite information at long distances for three spheres in a CFT. This falls as $r^{-6\Delta}$, where $r$ is the typical distance between the spheres, and $\Delta$, the lowest primary field dimension. The coefficient turns out to be a combination of terms coming from the two- and three-point functions and depends on the OPE coefficient of the field. We check the result with three-dimensional free scalars in the lattice finding excellent agreement. When the lowest-dimensional field is a scalar, we find that the mutual information can be monogamous only for quite large OPE coefficients, far away from a perturbative regime. When the lowest-dimensional primary is a fermion, we argue that the scaling must always be faster than $r^{-6\Delta_f}$. In particular, lattice calculations suggest a leading scaling $ r^{-(6\Delta_f+1)}$. For free fermions in three dimensions, we show that mutual information is also non-monogamous in the long-distance regime.

  8 citations

• Density-operator evolution: Complete positivity and the Keldysh real-time expansion

  Viktor Reimer, Maarten Rolf Wegewijs

  SciPost Phys. 7, 012 (2019) · published 25 July 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the reduced time-evolution of open quantum systems by combining quantum-information and statistical field theory. Inspired by prior work [EPL 102, 60001 (2013) and Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 050402 (2013)] we establish the explicit structure guaranteeing the complete positivity (CP) and trace-preservation (TP) of the real-time evolution expansion in terms of the microscopic system-environment coupling. This reveals a fundamental two-stage structure of the coupling expansion: Whereas the first stage defines the dissipative timescales of the system --before having integrated out the environment completely-- the second stage sums up elementary physical processes described by CP superoperators. This allows us to establish the nontrivial relation between the (Nakajima-Zwanzig) memory-kernel superoperator for the density operator and novel memory-kernel operators that generate the Kraus operators of an operator-sum. Importantly, this operational approach can be implemented in the existing Keldysh real-time technique and allows approximations for general time-nonlocal quantum master equations to be systematically compared and developed while keeping the CP and TP structure explicit. Our considerations build on the result that a Kraus operator for a physical measurement process on the environment can be obtained by 'cutting' a group of Keldysh real-time diagrams 'in half'. This naturally leads to Kraus operators lifted to the system plus environment which have a diagrammatic expansion in terms of time-nonlocal memory-kernel operators. These lifted Kraus operators obey coupled time-evolution equations which constitute an unraveling of the original Schr\"odinger equation for system plus environment. Whereas both equations lead to the same reduced dynamics, only the former explicitly encodes the operator-sum structure of the coupling expansion.

  8 citations

• Adaptive numerical solution of Kadanoff-Baym equations

  Francisco Meirinhos, Michael Kajan, Johann Kroha, Tim Bode

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 030 (2022) · published 27 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A time-stepping scheme with adaptivity in both the step size and the integration order is presented in the context of non-equilibrium dynamics described via Kadanoff-Baym equations. The accuracy and effectiveness of the algorithm are analysed by obtaining numerical solutions of exactly solvable models. We find a significant reduction in the number of time-steps compared to fixed-step methods. Due to the at least quadratic scaling of Kadanoff-Baym equations, reducing the amount of steps can dramatically increase the accessible integration time, opening the door for the study of long-time dynamics in interacting systems. A selection of illustrative examples is provided, among them interacting and open quantum systems as well as classical stochastic processes. An open-source implementation of our algorithm in the scientific-computing language Julia is made available.

  8 citations

• Skating on slippery ice

  J. M. J. van Leeuwen

  SciPost Phys. 3, 042 (2017) · published 23 December 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The friction of a stationary moving skate on smooth ice is investigated, in particular in relation to the formation of a thin layer of water between skate and ice. It is found that the combination of ploughing and sliding gives a friction force that is rather insensitive for parameters such as velocity and temperature. The weak dependence originates from the pressure adjustment inside the water layer. For instance, high velocities, which would give rise to high friction, also lead to large pressures, which, in turn, decrease the contact zone and so lower the friction. The theory is a combination and completion of two existing but conflicting theories on the formation of the water layer.

  8 citations