Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Probing non-thermal density fluctuations in the one-dimensional Bose gas

  Jacopo De Nardis, Miłosz Panfil, Andrea Gambassi, Leticia F. Cugliandolo, Robert Konik, Laura Foini

  SciPost Phys. 3, 023 (2017) · published 27 September 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Quantum integrable models display a rich variety of non-thermal excited states with unusual properties. The most common way to probe them is by performing a quantum quench, i.e., by letting a many-body initial state unitarily evolve with an integrable Hamiltonian. At late times, these systems are locally described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble with as many effective temperatures as their local conserved quantities. The experimental measurement of this macroscopic number of temperatures remains elusive. Here we show that they can be obtained by probing the dynamical structure factor of the system after the quench and by employing a generalized fluctuation-dissipation theorem that we provide. Our procedure allows us to completely reconstruct the stationary state of a quantum integrable system from state-of-the-art experimental observations.

  20 citations

• Induced density correlations in a sonic black hole condensate

  Yi-Hsieh Wang, Ted Jacobson, Mark Edwards, Charles W. Clark

  SciPost Phys. 3, 022 (2017) · published 26 September 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Analog black/white hole pairs, consisting of a region of supersonic flow, have been achieved in a recent experiment by J. Steinhauer using an elongated Bose-Einstein condensate. A growing standing density wave, and a checkerboard feature in the density-density correlation function, were observed in the supersonic region. We model the density-density correlation function, taking into account both quantum fluctuations and the shot-to-shot variation of atom number normally present in ultracold-atom experiments. We find that quantum fluctuations alone produce some, but not all, of the features of the correlation function, whereas atom-number fluctuation alone can produce all the observed features, and agreement is best when both are included. In both cases, the density-density correlation is not intrinsic to the fluctuations, but rather is induced by modulation of the standing wave caused by the fluctuations.

  25 citations

• A Short Introduction to Topological Quantum Computation

  Ville Lahtinen, Jiannis K. Pachos

  SciPost Phys. 3, 021 (2017) · published 9 September 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This review presents an entry-level introduction to topological quantum computation -- quantum computing with anyons. We introduce anyons at the system-independent level of anyon models and discuss the key concepts of protected fusion spaces and statistical quantum evolutions for encoding and processing quantum information. Both the encoding and the processing are inherently resilient against errors due to their topological nature, thus promising to overcome one of the main obstacles for the realisation of quantum computers. We outline the general steps of topological quantum computation, as well as discuss various challenges faced it. We also review the literature on condensed matter systems where anyons can emerge. Finally, the appearance of anyons and employing them for quantum computation is demonstrated in the context of a simple microscopic model -- the topological superconducting nanowire -- that describes the low-energy physics of several experimentally relevant settings. This model supports localised Majorana zero modes that are the simplest and the experimentally most tractable types of anyons that are needed to perform topological quantum computation.

  178 citations

• Inhomogeneous quenches in the transverse field Ising chain: scaling and front dynamics

  Márton Kormos

  SciPost Phys. 3, 020 (2017) · published 8 September 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of the transverse field quantum Ising chain evolving from an inhomogeneous initial state given by joining two macroscopically different semi-infinite chains. We obtain integral expressions for all two-point correlation functions of the Jordan-Wigner Majorana fermions at any time and for any value of the transverse field. Using this result, we compute analytically the profiles of various physical observables in the space-time scaling limit and show that they can be obtained from a hydrodynamic picture based on ballistically propagating quasiparticles. Going beyond the hydrodynamic limit, we analyze the approach to the non-equilibrium steady state and find that the leading late time corrections display a lattice effect. We also study the fine structure of the propagating fronts which are found to be described by the Airy kernel and its derivatives. Near the front we observe the phenomenon of energy back-flow where the energy locally flows from the colder to the hotter region.

  61 citations

• Emergence of curved light-cones in a class of inhomogeneous Luttinger liquids

  Jérôme Dubail, Jean-Marie Stéphan, Pasquale Calabrese

  SciPost Phys. 3, 019 (2017) · published 6 September 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The light-cone spreading of entanglement and correlation is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of homogeneous extended quantum systems. Here we point out that a class of inhomogenous Luttinger liquids (those with a uniform Luttinger parameter $K$) at low energy display the universal phenomenon of curved light cones: gapless excitations propagate along the geodesics of the metric $ds^2=dx^2+v(x)^2 d\tau^2$, with $v(x)$ being the calculable spatial dependent velocity induced by the inhomogeneity. We confirm our findings with explicit analytic and numerical calculations both in- and out-of-equilibrium for a Tonks-Girardeau gas in a harmonic potential and in lattice systems with artificially tuned hamiltonian density.

  71 citations

• Unifying description of the damping regimes of a stochastic particle in a periodic potential

  Antonio Piscitelli, Massimo Pica Ciamarra

  SciPost Phys. 3, 018 (2017) · published 4 September 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We analyze the classical problem of the stochastic dynamics of a particle confined in a periodic potential, through the so called Il'in and Khasminskii model, with a novel semi-analytical approach. Our approach gives access to the transient and the asymptotic dynamics in all damping regimes, which are difficult to investigate in the usual Brownian model. We show that the crossover from the overdamped to the underdamped regime is associated with the loss of a typical time scale and of a typical length scale, as signaled by the divergence of the probability distribution of a certain dynamical event. In the underdamped regime, normal diffusion coexists with a non Gaussian displacement probability distribution for a long transient, as recently observed in a variety of different systems. We rationalize the microscopic physical processes leading to the non-Gaussian behavior, as well as the timescale to recover the Gaussian statistics. The theoretical results are supported by numerical calculations and are compared to those obtained for the Brownian model.

  1 citation

• Strongly Interacting Light Dark Matter

  Sebastian Bruggisser, Francesco Riva, Alfredo Urbano

  SciPost Phys. 3, 017 (2017) · published 2 September 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the presence of approximate global symmetries that forbid relevant interactions, strongly coupled light Dark Matter (DM) can appear weakly coupled at small energy and generate a sizable relic abundance. Fundamental principles like unitarity restrict these symmetries to a small class, where the leading interactions are captured by effective operators up to dimension-8. Chiral symmetry, spontaneously broken global symmetries and non-linearly realized supersymmetry are examples of this. Their DM candidates (composite fermions, pseudo Nambu-Goldstone Bosons and Goldstini) are interesting targets for LHC missing-energy searches.

  25 citations

• On the construction of charged operators inside an eternal black hole

  Monica Guica, Daniel L. Jafferis

  SciPost Phys. 3, 016 (2017) · published 28 August 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We revisit the holographic construction of (approximately) local bulk operators inside an eternal AdS black hole in terms of operators in the boundary CFTs. If the bulk operator carries charge, the construction must involve a qualitatively new object: a Wilson line that stretches between the two boundaries of the eternal black hole. This operator - more precisely, its zero mode - cannot be expressed in terms of the boundary currents and only exists in entangled states dual to two-sided geometries, which suggests that it is a state-dependent operator. We determine the action of the Wilson line on the relevant subspaces of the total Hilbert space, and show that it behaves as a local operator from the point of view of either CFT. For the case of three bulk dimensions, we give explicit expressions for the charged bulk field and the Wilson line. Furthermore, we show that when acting on the thermofield double state, the Wilson line may be extracted from a limit of certain standard CFT operator expressions. We also comment on the relationship between the Wilson line and previously discussed mirror operators in the eternal black hole.

  21 citations

• Mobile impurities in integrable models

  Andrew S. Campbell, Dimitri M. Gangardt

  SciPost Phys. 3, 015 (2017) · published 22 August 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We use a mobile impurity or depleton model to study elementary excitations in one-dimensional integrable systems. For Lieb-Liniger and bosonic Yang-Gaudin models we express two phenomenological parameters characterising renormalised interactions of mobile impurities with superfluid background: the number of depleted particles, $N$ and the superfluid phase drop $\pi J$ in terms of the corresponding Bethe Ansatz solution and demonstrate, in the leading order, the absence of two-phonon scattering resulting in vanishing rates of inelastic processes such as viscosity experienced by the mobile impurities

  7 citations

• Interaction effects in a multi-channel Fabry-Pérot interferometer in the Aharonov-Bohm regime

  D. Ferraro, E. Sukhorukov

  SciPost Phys. 3, 014 (2017) · published 17 August 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate a Fabry-P\'erot interferometer in the integer Hall regime in which only one edge channel is transmitted and n channels are trapped into the interferometer loop. Addressing recent experimental observations, we assume that Coulomb blockade effects are completely suppressed due to screening, while keeping track of a residual strong short range electron-electron interaction between the co-propagating edge channels trapped into the interferometer loop. This kind of interaction can be completely described in the framework of the edge-magnetoplasmon scattering matrix theory allowing us to evaluate the backscattering current and the associated differential conductance as a function of the bias voltage. The remarkable features of these quantities are discussed as a function of the number of trapped channels. The developed formalism reveals very general and provides also a simple way to model the experimentally relevant geometry in which some of the trapped channels are absorbed into an Ohmic contact, leading to energy dissipation.

  12 citations