Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Low temperature quantum bounds on simple models

  Silvia Pappalardi, Jorge Kurchan

  SciPost Phys. 13, 006 (2022) · published 22 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the past few years, there has been considerable activity around a set of quantum bounds on transport coefficients (viscosity) and chaos (Lyapunov exponent), relevant at low temperatures. The interest comes from the fact that Black-Hole models seem to saturate all of them. The goal of this work is to gain physical intuition about the quantum mechanisms that enforce these bounds on simple models. To this aim, we consider classical and quantum free dynamics on curved manifolds. These systems exhibit chaos up to the lowest temperatures and - as we discuss - they violate the bounds in the classical limit. First of all, we show that the quantum dimensionless viscosity and the Lyapunov exponent only depend on the de Broglie length and a geometric length-scale, thus establishing the scale at which quantum effects become relevant. Then, we focus on the bound on the Lyapunov exponent and identify three different ways in which quantum effects arise in practice. We illustrate our findings on a toy model given by the surface of constant negative curvature - a paradigmatic model of quantum chaos - glued to a cylinder. By exact solution and numerical investigations, we show how the chaotic behaviour is limited by the quantum effects of the curvature itself. Interestingly, we find that at the lowest energies the bound to chaos is dominated by the longest length scales, and it is therefore a collective effect.

  9 citations

• Quantum to classical mapping of the two-dimensional toric code in an external field

  Sydney R. Timmerman, Zvonimir Z. Bandic, Roger G. Melko

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 57 (2022) · published 20 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Kitaev's toric code Hamiltonian in dimension D=2 has been extensively studied for its topological properties, including its quantum error correction capabilities. While the Hamiltonian is quantum, it lies within the class of models that admits a D+1 dimensional classical representation. In these notes, we provide details of a Suzuki-Trotter expansion of the partition function of the toric code Hamiltonian in the presence of an external magnetic field. By coupling additional degrees of freedom in the form of a matter field that can subsequently be gauged away, we explicitly derive a classical Hamiltonian on a cubic lattice which takes the form of a non-isotropic 3D Ising gauge theory.

  2 citations

• On the logarithmic bipartite fidelity of the open XXZ spin chain at $Δ=-1/2$

  Christian Hagendorf, Gilles Parez

  SciPost Phys. 12, 199 (2022) · published 24 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The open XXZ spin chain with the anisotropy $\Delta=-\frac12$ and a one-parameter family of diagonal boundary fields is studied at finite length. A determinant formula for an overlap involving the spin chain's ground-state vectors for different lengths is found. The overlap allows one to obtain an exact finite-size formula for the ground state's logarithmic bipartite fidelity. The leading terms of its asymptotic series for large chain lengths are evaluated. Their expressions confirm the predictions of conformal field theory for the fidelity.

  2 citations

• Edge physics at the deconfined transition between a quantum spin Hall insulator and a superconductor

  Ruochen Ma, Liujun Zou, Chong Wang

  SciPost Phys. 12, 196 (2022) · published 14 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the edge physics of the deconfined quantum phase transition (DQCP) between a spontaneous quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator and a spin-singlet superconductor (SC). Although the bulk of this transition is in the same universality class as the paradigmatic deconfined Neel to valence-bond-solid transition, the boundary physics has a richer structure due to proximity to a quantum spin Hall state. We use the parton trick to write down an effective field theory for the QSH-SC transition in the presence of a boundary. We calculate various edge properties in an $N\to\infty$ limit. We show that the boundary Luttinger liquid in the QSH state survives at the phase transition, but only as "fractional" degrees of freedom that carry charge but not spin. The physical fermion remains gapless on the edge at the critical point, with a universal jump in the fermion scaling dimension as the system approaches the transition from the QSH side. The critical point could be viewed as a gapless analogue of the quantum spin Hall state but with the full $SU(2)$ spin rotation symmetry, which cannot be realized if the bulk is gapped.

  9 citations

• The extraordinary boundary transition in the 3d O(N) model via conformal bootstrap

  Jaychandran Padayasi, Abijith Krishnan, Max A. Metlitski, Ilya A. Gruzberg, Marco Meineri

  SciPost Phys. 12, 190 (2022) · published 9 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This paper studies the critical behavior of the 3d classical $\mathrm{O}(N)$ model with a boundary. Recently, one of us established that upon treating $N$ as a continuous variable, there exists a critical value $N_c > 2$ such that for $2 \leq N < N_c$ the model exhibits a new extraordinary-log boundary universality class, if the symmetry preserving interactions on the boundary are enhanced. $N_c$ is determined by a ratio of universal amplitudes in the normal universality class, where instead a symmetry breaking field is applied on the boundary. We study the normal universality class using the numerical conformal bootstrap. We find truncated solutions to the crossing equation that indicate $N_c \approx 5$. Additionally, we use semi-definite programming to place rigorous bounds on the boundary CFT data of interest to conclude that $N_c > 3$, under a certain positivity assumption which we check in various perturbative limits.

  48 citations

• On the generalizability of artificial neural networks in spin models

  Hon Man Yau, Nan Su

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 032 (2022) · published 8 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The applicability of artificial neural networks (ANNs) is typically limited to the models they are trained with and little is known about their generalizability, which is a pressing issue in the practical application of trained ANNs to unseen problems. Here, by using the task of identifying phase transitions in spin models, we establish a systematic generalizability such that simple ANNs trained with the two-dimensional ferromagnetic Ising model can be applied to the ferromagnetic q-state Potts model in different dimensions for q>=2. The same scheme can be applied to the highly nontrivial antiferromagnetic q-state Potts model. We demonstrate that similar results can be obtained by reducing the exponentially large state space spanned by the training data to one that comprises only three representative configurations artificially constructed through symmetry considerations. We expect our findings to simplify and accelerate the development of machine learning-assisted tasks in spin-model related disciplines in physics and materials science.

  6 citations

• Inhomogeneous quantum quenches in the sine-Gordon theory

  Dávid X. Horváth, Spyros Sotiriadis, Márton Kormos, Gábor Takács

  SciPost Phys. 12, 144 (2022) · published 3 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study inhomogeneous quantum quenches in the attractive regime of the sine-Gordon model. In our protocol, the system is prepared in an inhomogeneous initial state in finite volume by coupling the topological charge density operator to a Gaussian external field. After switching off the external field, the subsequent time evolution is governed by the homogeneous sine-Gordon Hamiltonian. Varying either the interaction strength of the sine-Gordon model or the amplitude of the external source field, an interesting transition is observed in the expectation value of the soliton density. This affects both the initial profile of the density and its time evolution and can be summarised as a steep transition between behaviours reminiscent of the Klein-Gordon, and the free massive Dirac fermion theory with initial external fields of high enough magnitude. The transition in the initial state is also displayed by the classical sine-Gordon theory and hence can be understood by semi-classical considerations in terms of the presence of small amplitude field configurations and the appearance of soliton excitations, which are naturally associated with bosonic and fermionic excitations on the quantum level, respectively. Features of the quantum dynamics are also consistent with this correspondence and comparing them to the classical evolution of the density profile reveals that quantum effects become markedly pronounced during the time evolution. These results suggest a crossover between the dominance of bosonic and fermionic degrees of freedom whose precise identification in terms of the fundamental particle excitations can be rather non-trivial. Nevertheless, their interplay is expected to influence the sine-Gordon dynamics in arbitrary inhomogeneous settings.

  20 citations

• From integrability to chaos in quantum Liouvillians

  Álvaro Rubio-García, Rafael A. Molina, Jorge Dukelsky

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 026 (2022) · published 2 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The dynamics of open quantum systems can be described by a Liouvillian, which in the Markovian approximation fulfills the Lindblad master equation. We present a family of integrable many-body Liouvillians based on Richardson-Gaudin models with a complex structure of the jump operators. Making use of this new region of integrability, we study the transition to chaos in terms of a two-parameter Liouvillian. The transition is characterized by the spectral statistics of the complex eigenvalues of the Liouvillian operators using the nearest neighbor spacing distribution and by the ratios between eigenvalue distances.

  21 citations

• Universal tradeoff relation between speed, uncertainty, and dissipation in nonequilibrium stationary states

  Izaak Neri

  SciPost Phys. 12, 139 (2022) · published 22 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We derive universal thermodynamic inequalities that bound from below the moments of first-passage times of stochastic currents in nonequilibrium stationary states of Markov jump processes in the limit where the thresholds that define the first-passage problem are large. These inequalities describe a tradeoff between speed, uncertainty, and dissipation in nonequilibrium processes, which are quantified, respectively, with the moments of the first-passage times of stochastic currents, the splitting probability, and the mean entropy production rate. Near equilibrium, the inequalities imply that mean-first passage times are lower bounded by the Van't Hoff-Arrhenius law, whereas far from thermal equilibrium the bounds describe a universal speed limit for rate processes. When the current is the stochastic entropy production, then the bounds are equalities, a remarkable property that follows from the fact that the exponentiated negative entropy production is a martingale.

  15 citations

• Enstrophy without boost symmetry

  Natalia Pinzani-Fokeeva, Amos Yarom

  SciPost Phys. 12, 136 (2022) · published 21 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We construct an approximately conserved current for $2+1$ dimensional, Aristotelian (non boost invariant), fluid flow. When Aristotelian symmetry is enhanced to Galilean symmetry, this current matches the enstrophy current responsible for the inverse cascade in incompressible fluids. Other enhancements of Aristotelian symmetry discussed in this work include Lorentzian, Carrollian and Lifshitz scale symmetry.

  2 citations