Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Out of time ordered effective dynamics of a quartic oscillator

  Bidisha Chakrabarty, Soumyadeep Chaudhuri

  SciPost Phys. 7, 013 (2019) · published 29 July 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the dynamics of a quantum Brownian particle weakly coupled to a thermal bath. Working in the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism, we develop an effective action of the particle up to quartic terms. We demonstrate that this quartic effective theory is dual to a stochastic dynamics governed by a non-linear Langevin equation. The Schwinger-Keldysh effective theory, or the equivalent non-linear Langevin dynamics, is insufficient to determine the out of time order correlators (OTOCs) of the particle. To overcome this limitation, we construct an extended effective action in a generalised Schwinger-Keldysh framework. We determine the additional quartic couplings in this OTO effective action and show their dependence on the bath's 4-point OTOCs. We analyse the constraints imposed on the OTO effective theory by microscopic reversibility and thermality of the bath. We show that these constraints lead to a generalised fluctuation-dissipation relation between the non-Gaussianity in the distribution of the thermal noise experienced by the particle and the thermal jitter in its damping coefficient. The quartic effective theory developed in this work provides extension of several results previously obtained for the cubic OTO dynamics of a Brownian particle.

  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.

  11 citations

• Bootstrapping MN and tetragonal CFTs in three dimensions

  Andreas Stergiou

  SciPost Phys. 7, 010 (2019) · published 17 July 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Conformal field theories (CFTs) with MN and tetragonal global symmetry in $d=2+1$ dimensions are relevant for structural, antiferromagnetic and helimagnetic phase transitions. As a result, they have been studied in great detail with the $\varepsilon=4-d$ expansion and other field theory methods. The study of these theories with the nonperturbative numerical conformal bootstrap is initiated in this work. Bounds for operator dimensions are obtained and they are found to possess sharp kinks in the MN case, suggesting the existence of full-fledged CFTs. Based on the existence of a certain large-$N$ expansion in theories with MN symmetry, these are argued to be the CFTs predicted by the $\varepsilon$ expansion. In the tetragonal case no new kinks are found, consistently with the absence of such CFTs in the $\varepsilon$ expansion. Estimates for critical exponents are provided for a few cases describing phase transitions in actual physical systems. In two particular MN cases, corresponding to theories with global symmetry groups $O(2)^2\rtimes S_2$ and $O(2)^3\rtimes S_3$, a second kink is found. In the $O(2)^2\rtimes S_2$ case it is argued to be saturated by a CFT that belongs to a new universality class relevant for the structural phase transition of NbO$_2$ and paramagnetic-helimagnetic transitions of the rare-earth metals Ho and Dy. In the $O(2)^3\rtimes S_3$ case it is suggested that the CFT that saturates the second kink belongs to a new universality class relevant for the paramagnetic-antiferromagnetic phase transition of the rare-earth metal Nd.

  25 citations

• A web of 2d dualities: ${\bf Z}_2$ gauge fields and Arf invariants

  Andreas Karch, David Tong, Carl Turner

  SciPost Phys. 7, 007 (2019) · published 10 July 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We describe a web of well-known dualities connecting quantum field theories in $d=1+1$ dimensions. The web is constructed by gauging ${\bf Z}_2$ global symmetries and includes a number of perennial favourites such as the Jordan-Wigner transformation, Kramers-Wannier duality, bosonization of a Dirac fermion, and T-duality. There are also less-loved examples, such as non-modular invariant $c=1$ CFTs that depend on a background spin structure.

  107 citations

• Competing Spin Liquid Phases in the S=$\frac{1}{2}$ Heisenberg Model on the Kagome Lattice

  Shenghan Jiang, Panjin Kim, Jung Hoon Han, Ying Ran

  SciPost Phys. 7, 006 (2019) · published 9 July 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The properties of ground state of spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ kagome antiferromagnetic Heisenberg (KAFH) model have attracted considerable interest in the past few decades, and recent numerical simulations reported a spin liquid phase. The nature of the spin liquid phase remains unclear. For instance, the interplay between symmetries and $Z_2$ topological order leads to different types of $Z_2$ spin liquid phases. In this paper, we develop a numerical simulation method based on symmetric projected entangled-pair states (PEPS), which is generally applicable to strongly correlated model systems in two spatial dimensions. We then apply this method to study the nature of the ground state of the KAFH model. Our results are consistent with that the ground state is a $U(1)$ Dirac spin liquid rather than a $Z_2$ spin liquid.

  24 citations

• Entanglement evolution and generalised hydrodynamics: interacting integrable systems

  Vincenzo Alba, Bruno Bertini, Maurizio Fagotti

  SciPost Phys. 7, 005 (2019) · published 8 July 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the dynamics of bipartite entanglement after the sudden junction of two leads in interacting integrable models. By combining the quasiparticle picture for the entanglement spreading with Generalised Hydrodynamics we derive an analytical prediction for the dynamics of the entanglement entropy between a finite subsystem and the rest. We find that the entanglement rate between the two leads depends only on the physics at the interface and differs from the rate of exchange of thermodynamic entropy. This contrasts with the behaviour in free or homogeneous interacting integrable systems, where the two rates coincide.

  70 citations

• Investigating ultrafast quantum magnetism with machine learning

  Giammarco Fabiani, Johan H. Mentink

  SciPost Phys. 7, 004 (2019) · published 5 July 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the efficiency of the recently proposed Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) representation of quantum many-body states to study both the static properties and quantum spin dynamics in the two-dimensional Heisenberg model on a square lattice. For static properties we find close agreement with numerically exact Quantum Monte Carlo results in the thermodynamical limit. For dynamics and small systems, we find excellent agreement with exact diagonalization, while for systems up to N=256 spins close consistency with interacting spin-wave theory is obtained. In all cases the accuracy converges fast with the number of network parameters, giving access to much bigger systems than feasible before. This suggests great potential to investigate the quantum many-body dynamics of large scale spin systems relevant for the description of magnetic materials strongly out of equilibrium.

  32 citations

• Phases of scrambling in eigenstates

  Tarek Anous, Julian Sonner

  SciPost Phys. 7, 003 (2019) · published 4 July 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We use the monodromy method to compute expectation values of an arbitrary number of light operators in finitely excited ("heavy") eigenstates of holographic 2D CFT. For eigenstates with scaling dimensions above the BTZ threshold, these behave thermally up to small corrections, with an effective temperature determined by the heavy state. Below the threshold we find oscillatory and not decaying behavior. As an application of these results we compute the expectation of the out-of-time order arrangement of four light operators in a heavy eigenstate, i.e. a six-point function. Above the threshold we find maximally scrambling behavior with Lyapunov exponent $2\pi T_{\rm eff}$. Below threshold we find that the eigenstate OTOC shows persistent harmonic oscillations.

  48 citations

• Quantum robustness and phase transitions of the 3D Toric Code in a field

  David A. Reiss, Kai Phillip Schmidt

  SciPost Phys. 6, 078 (2019) · published 27 June 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the robustness of 3D intrinsic topogical order under external perturbations by investigating the paradigmatic microscopic model, the 3D toric code in an external magnetic field. Exact dualities as well as variational calculations reveal a ground-state phase diagram with first and second-order quantum phase transitions. The variational approach can be applied without further approximations only for certain field directions. In the general field case, an approximative scheme based on an expansion of the variational energy in orders of the variational parameters is developed. For the breakdown of the 3D intrinsic topological order, it is found that the (im-)mobility of the quasiparticle excitations is crucial in contrast to their fractional statistics.

  18 citations

• Edge mode locality in perturbed symmetry protected topological order

  Marcel Goihl, Christian Krumnow, Marek Gluza, Jens Eisert, Nicolas Tarantino

  SciPost Phys. 6, 072 (2019) · published 21 June 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Spin chains with symmetry-protected edge zero modes can be seen as prototypical systems for exploring topological signatures in quantum systems. These are useful for robustly encoding quantum information. However in an experimental realization of such a system, spurious interactions may cause the edge zero modes to delocalize. To stabilize against this influence beyond simply increasing the bulk gap, it has been proposed to harness suitable notions of disorder. Equipped with numerical tools for constructing locally conserved operators that we introduce, we comprehensively explore the interplay of local interactions and disorder on localized edge modes in the XZX cluster Hamiltonian. This puts us in a position to challenge the narrative that disorder necessarily stabilizes topological order. Contrary to heuristic reasoning, we find that disorder has no effect on the edge modes in the Anderson localized regime. Moreover, disorder helps localize only a subset of edge modes in the many-body interacting regime. We identify one edge mode operator that behaves as if subjected to a non-interacting perturbation, i.e., shows no disorder dependence. This implies that in finite systems, edge mode operators effectively delocalize at distinct interaction strengths. In essence, our findings suggest that the ability to identify and control the best localized edge mode trumps any gains from introducing disorder.

  5 citations