Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Landau theory for non-equilibrium steady states

  Camille Aron, Claudio Chamon

  SciPost Phys. 8, 074 (2020) · published 8 May 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We examine how systems in non-equilibrium steady states close to a continuous phase transition can still be described by a Landau potential if one forgoes the assumption of analyticity. In a system simultaneously coupled to several baths at different temperatures, the non-analytic potential arises from the different density of states of the baths. In periodically driven-dissipative systems, the role of multiple baths is played by a single bath transferring energy at different harmonics of the driving frequency. The mean-field critical exponents become dependent on the low-energy features of the two most singular baths. We propose an extension beyond mean field.

  14 citations

• Lattice Bisognano-Wichmann modular Hamiltonian in critical quantum spin chains

  Jiaju Zhang, Pasquale Calabrese, Marcello Dalmonte, M. A. Rajabpour

  SciPost Phys. Core 2, 007 (2020) · published 7 May 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We carry out a comprehensive comparison between the exact modular Hamiltonian and the lattice version of the Bisognano-Wichmann (BW) one in one-dimensional critical quantum spin chains. As a warm-up, we first illustrate how the trace distance provides a more informative mean of comparison between reduced density matrices when compared to any other Schatten $n$-distance, normalized or not. In particular, as noticed in earlier works, it provides a way to bound other correlation functions in a precise manner, i.e., providing both lower and upper bounds. Additionally, we show that two close reduced density matrices, i.e. with zero trace distance for large sizes, can have very different modular Hamiltonians. This means that, in terms of describing how two states are close to each other, it is more informative to compare their reduced density matrices rather than the corresponding modular Hamiltonians. After setting this framework, we consider the ground states for infinite and periodic XX spin chain and critical Ising chain. We provide robust numerical evidence that the trace distance between the lattice BW reduced density matrix and the exact one goes to zero as $\ell^{-2}$ for large length of the interval $\ell$. This provides strong constraints on the difference between the corresponding entanglement entropies and correlation functions. Our results indicate that discretized BW reduced density matrices reproduce exact entanglement entropies and correlation functions of local operators in the limit of large subsystem sizes. Finally, we show that the BW reduced density matrices fall short of reproducing the exact behavior of the logarithmic emptiness formation probability in the ground state of the XX spin chain.

  27 citations

• Information geometry in quantum field theory: lessons from simple examples

  Johanna Erdmenger, Kevin T. Grosvenor, Ro Jefferson

  SciPost Phys. 8, 073 (2020) · published 6 May 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Motivated by the increasing connections between information theory and high-energy physics, particularly in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence, we explore the information geometry associated to a variety of simple systems. By studying their Fisher metrics, we derive some general lessons that may have important implications for the application of information geometry in holography. We begin by demonstrating that the symmetries of the physical theory under study play a strong role in the resulting geometry, and that the appearance of an AdS metric is a relatively general feature. We then investigate what information the Fisher metric retains about the physics of the underlying theory by studying the geometry for both the classical 2d Ising model and the corresponding 1d free fermion theory, and find that the curvature diverges precisely at the phase transition on both sides. We discuss the differences that result from placing a metric on the space of theories vs. states, using the example of coherent free fermion states. We compare the latter to the metric on the space of coherent free boson states and show that in both cases the metric is determined by the symmetries of the corresponding density matrix. We also clarify some misconceptions in the literature pertaining to different notions of flatness associated to metric and non-metric connections, with implications for how one interprets the curvature of the geometry. Our results indicate that in general, caution is needed when connecting the AdS geometry arising from certain models with the AdS/CFT correspondence, and seek to provide a useful collection of guidelines for future progress in this exciting area.

  24 citations

• Anomalies, a mod 2 index, and dynamics of 2d adjoint QCD

  Aleksey Cherman, Theodore Jacobson, Yuya Tanizaki, Mithat Ünsal

  SciPost Phys. 8, 072 (2020) · published 5 May 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We show that $2$d adjoint QCD, an $SU(N)$ gauge theory with one massless adjoint Majorana fermion, has a variety of mixed 't Hooft anomalies. The anomalies are derived using a recent mod $2$ index theorem and its generalization that incorporates 't Hooft flux. Anomaly matching and dynamical considerations are used to determine the ground-state structure of the theory. The anomalies, which are present for most values of $N$, are matched by spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. We find that massless $2$d adjoint QCD confines for $N >2$, except for test charges of $N$-ality $N/2$, which are deconfined. In other words, $\mathbb Z_N$ center symmetry is unbroken for odd $N$ and spontaneously broken to $\mathbb Z_{N/2}$ for even $N$. All of these results are confirmed by explicit calculations on small $\mathbb{R}\times S^1$. We also show that this non-supersymmetric theory exhibits exact Bose-Fermi degeneracies for all states, including the vacua, when $N$ is even. Furthermore, for most values of $N$, $2$d massive adjoint QCD describes a non-trivial symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase of matter, including certain cases where the number of interacting Majorana fermions is a multiple of $8$. As a result, it fits into the classification of $(1+1)$d SPT phases of interacting Majorana fermions in an interesting way.

  42 citations

• Constraining the gauge-fixed Lagrangian in minimal Landau gauge

  Axel Maas

  SciPost Phys. 8, 071 (2020) · published 1 May 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A continuum formulation of gauge-fixing resolving the Gribov-Singer ambiguity remains a challenge. Finding a Lagrangian formulation of operational resolutions in numerical lattice calculations, like minimal Landau gauge, would be one possibility. Such a formulation will here be constrained by reconstructing the Dyson-Schwinger equation for which the lattice minimal-Landau-gauge ghost propagator is a solution. It is found that this requires an additional term. As a by-product new, high precision lattice results for the ghost-gluon vertex in three and four dimensions are obtained.

  14 citations

• Multifractality and its role in anomalous transport in the disordered XXZ spin-chain

  David J. Luitz, Ivan M. Khaymovich, Yevgeny Bar Lev

  SciPost Phys. Core 2, 006 (2020) · published 30 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The disordered XXZ model is a prototype model of the many-body localization transition (MBL). Despite numerous studies of this model, the available numerical evidence of multifractality of its eigenstates is not very conclusive due severe finite size effects. Moreover it is not clear if similarly to the case of single-particle physics, multifractal properties of the many-body eigenstates are related to anomalous transport, which is observed in this model. In this work, using a state-of-the-art, massively parallel, numerically exact method, we study systems of up to 24 spins and show that a large fraction of the delocalized phase flows towards ergodicity in the thermodynamic limit, while a region immediately preceding the MBL transition appears to be multifractal in this limit. We discuss the implication of our finding on the mechanism of subdiffusive transport.

  59 citations

• How to GAN away detector effects

  Marco Bellagente, Anja Butter, Gregor Kasieczka, Tilman Plehn, Ramon Winterhalder

  SciPost Phys. 8, 070 (2020) · published 29 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  LHC analyses directly comparing data and simulated events bear the danger of using first-principle predictions only as a black-box part of event simulation. We show how simulations, for instance, of detector effects can instead be inverted using generative networks. This allows us to reconstruct parton level information from measured events. Our results illustrate how, in general, fully conditional generative networks can statistically invert Monte Carlo simulations. As a technical by-product we show how a maximum mean discrepancy loss can be staggered or cooled.

  84 citations

• Exploring phase space with Neural Importance Sampling

  Enrico Bothmann, Timo Janßen, Max Knobbe, Tobias Schmale, Steffen Schumann

  SciPost Phys. 8, 069 (2020) · published 29 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a novel approach for the integration of scattering cross sections and the generation of partonic event samples in high-energy physics. We propose an importance sampling technique capable of overcoming typical deficiencies of existing approaches by incorporating neural networks. The method guarantees full phase space coverage and the exact reproduction of the desired target distribution, in our case given by the squared transition matrix element. We study the performance of the algorithm for a few representative examples, including top-quark pair production and gluon scattering into three- and four-gluon final states.

  82 citations

• Operator Entanglement in Local Quantum Circuits II: Solitons in Chains of Qubits

  Bruno Bertini, Pavel Kos, Tomaz Prosen

  SciPost Phys. 8, 068 (2020) · published 28 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We provide exact results for the dynamics of local-operator entanglement in quantum circuits with two-dimensional wires featuring ultralocal solitons, i.e. single-site operators which, up to a phase, are simply shifted by the time evolution. We classify all circuits allowing for ultralocal solitons and show that only dual-unitary circuits can feature moving ultralocal solitons. Then, we rigorously prove that if a circuit has an ultralocal soliton moving to the left (right), the entanglement of local operators initially supported on even (odd) sites saturates to a constant value and its dynamics can be computed exactly. Importantly, this does not bound the growth of complexity in chiral circuits, where solitons move only in one direction, say to the left. Indeed, in this case we observe numerically that operators on the odd sublattice have unbounded entanglement. Finally, we present a closed-form expression for the local-operator entanglement entropies in circuits with ultralocal solitons moving in both directions. Our results hold irrespectively of integrability.

  64 citations

• Operator Entanglement in Local Quantum Circuits I: Chaotic Dual-Unitary Circuits

  Bruno Bertini, Pavel Kos, Tomaz Prosen

  SciPost Phys. 8, 067 (2020) · published 28 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The entanglement in operator space is a well established measure for the complexity of the quantum many-body dynamics. In particular, that of local operators has recently been proposed as dynamical chaos indicator, i.e. as a quantity able to discriminate between quantum systems with integrable and chaotic dynamics. For chaotic systems the local-operator entanglement is expected to grow linearly in time, while it is expected to grow at most logarithmically in the integrable case. Here we study local-operator entanglement in dual-unitary quantum circuits, a class of "statistically solvable" quantum circuits that we recently introduced. We identify a class of "completely chaotic" dual-unitary circuits where the local-operator entanglement grows linearly and we provide a conjecture for its asymptotic behaviour which is in excellent agreement with the numerical results. Interestingly, our conjecture also predicts a "phase transition" in the slope of the local-operator entanglement when varying the parameters of the circuits.

  112 citations