Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Monopole operators and bulk-boundary relation in holomorphic topological theories

  Keyou Zeng

  SciPost Phys. 14, 153 (2023) · published 13 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the holomorphic twist of $3d$ $\mathcal{N} = 2$ supersymmetric field theories, discuss the perturbative bulk local operators in general, and explicitly construct non perturbative bulk local operators for abelian gauge theories. Our construction is verified by matching the character of the algebra with the superconformal index. We test a conjectural relation between the derived center of boundary algebras and bulk algebras in various cases, including Landau-Ginzburg models with an arbitrary superpotential and some abelian gauge theories. In the latter cases, monopole operators appear in the derived center of a perturbative boundary algebra. We briefly discuss the higher structures in both boundary and bulk algebras.

  3 citations

• Topological and quantum critical properties of the interacting Majorana chain model

  Natalia Chepiga, Nicolas Laflorencie

  SciPost Phys. 14, 152 (2023) · published 13 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study Majorana chain with the shortest possible interaction term and in the presence of hopping alternation. When formulated in terms of spins the model corresponds to the transverse field Ising model with nearest-neighbor transverse and next-nearest-neighbor longitudinal repulsion. The phase diagram obtained with extensive DMRG simulations is very rich and contains six phases. Four gapped phases include paramagnetic, period-2 with broken translation symmetry, $\mathbb{Z}_2$ with broken parity symmetry and the period-2-$\mathbb{Z}_2$ phase with both symmetries broken. In addition there are two floating phases: gapless and critical Luttinger liquid with incommensurate correlations, and with an additional spontaneously broken $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry in one of them. By analyzing an extended phase diagram we demonstrate that, in contrast with a common belief, the Luttinger liquid phase along the self-dual critical line terminates at a weaker interaction strength than the end point of the Ising critical line that we find to be in the tri-critical Ising universality class. We also show that none of these two points is a Lifshitz point terminating the incommensurability. In addition, we analyzed topological properties through Majorana zero modes emergent in the two topological phases, with and without incommensurability. In the weak interaction regime, a self-consistent mean-field treatment provides a remarkable accuracy for the description of the spectral pairing and the parity switches induced by the interaction.

  3 citations

• Gaussian-state Ansatz for the non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum spin lattices

  Raphaël Menu, Tommaso Roscilde

  SciPost Phys. 14, 151 (2023) · published 12 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The study of non-equilibrium dynamics is one of the most important challenges of modern quantum many-body physics, in relationship with fundamental questions in quantum statistical mechanics, as well as with the fields of quantum simulation and computing. In this work we propose a Gaussian Ansatz for the study of the nonequilibrium dynamics of quantum spin systems. Within our approach, the quantum spins are mapped onto Holstein-Primakoff bosons, such that a coherent spin state - chosen as the initial state of the dynamics - represents the bosonic vacuum. The state of the system is then postulated to remain a bosonic Gaussian state at all times, an assumption which is exact when the bosonic Hamiltonian is quadratic; and which is justified in the case of a nonlinear Hamiltonian if the boson density remains moderate. We test the accuracy of such an Ansatz in the paradigmatic case of the $S=1/2$ transverse-field Ising model, in one and two dimensions, initialized in a state aligned with the applied field. We show that the Gaussian Ansatz, when applied to the bosonic Hamiltonian with nonlinearities truncated to quartic order, is able to reproduce faithfully the evolution of the state, including its relaxation to the equilibrium regime, for fields larger than the critical field for the paramagnetic-ferromagnetic transition in the ground state. In particular the spatio-temporal pattern of correlations reconstructed via the Gaussian Ansatz reveals the dispersion relation of quasiparticle excitations, exhibiting the softening of the excitation gap upon approaching the critical field. Our results suggest that the Gaussian Ansatz correctly captures the essential effects of nonlinearities in quantum spin dynamics; and that it can be applied to the study of fundamental phenomena such as quantum thermalization and its breakdown.

  3 citations

• Holography for people with no time

  Henry W. Lin, Juan Maldacena, Liza Rozenberg, Jieru Shan

  SciPost Phys. 14, 150 (2023) · published 12 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the gravitational description of extremal supersymmetric black holes. We point out that the $AdS_2$ near horizon geometry can be used to compute interesting observables, such as correlation functions of operators. In this limit, the Hamiltonian is zero and correlation functions are time independent. We discuss some possible implications for the gravity description of black hole microstates. We also compare with numerical results in a supersymmetric version of SYK. These results can also be interpreted as providing a construction of wormholes joining two extremal black holes. This is the short version of a longer and more technical companion paper [SciPost Phys. 14, 128 (2023)].

  14 citations

• Parametrization and thermodynamic scaling of pair correlation functions for the fractional quantum Hall effect

  Jørgen Fulsebakke, Mikael Fremling, Niall Moran, Joost K. Slingerland

  SciPost Phys. 14, 149 (2023) · published 9 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The calculation of pair correlations and density profiles of quasiholes are routine steps in the study of proposed fractional quantum Hall states. Nevertheless, the field has not adopted a standard way to present the results of such calculations in an easily reproducible form. We develop a polynomial expansion that allows for easy quantitative comparison between different candidate wavefunctions, as well as reliable scaling of correlation and quasihole profiles to the thermodynamic limit. We start from the well-known expansion introduced by Girvin [PRB, 30 (1984)] (see also [Girvin, MacDonald and Platzman, PRB, 33 (1986)]), which is physically appealing but, as we demonstrate, numerically unstable. We orthogonalize their basis set to obtain a new basis of modified Jacobi polynomials, whose coefficients can be stably calculated. We then apply our expansion to extract pair correlation expansion coefficients and quasihole profiles in the thermodynamic limit for a wide range of fractional quantum Hall wavefunctions. These include the Laughlin series, composite fermion states with both reverse and direct flux attachment, the Moore-Read Pfaffian state, and BS hierarchy states. The expansion procedure works for both abelian and non-abelian quasiholes, even when the density at the core is not zero. We find that the expansion coefficients for all quantum Hall states considered can be fit remarkably well using a cosine oscillation with exponentially decaying amplitude. The frequency and the decay length are related in an intuitive, but not elementary way to the filling fraction. Different states at the same filling fraction can have distinct values for these parameters. Finally, we also use our scaled correlation functions to calculate estimates for the magneto-roton gaps of the various states.

• Radiation, entanglement and islands from a boundary local quench

  Lorenzo Bianchi, Stefano De Angelis, Marco Meineri

  SciPost Phys. 14, 148 (2023) · published 8 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the entanglement and the energy density of the radiation emitted after a local quench in a boundary conformal field theory. We use the operator product expansion (OPE) to predict the early- and late-time behavior of the entanglement entropy and we find, under mild assumptions, a universal form for the leading term, which we test on some treatable two-dimensional examples. We also derive a general upper bound on the entanglement, valid along the full time evolution. In two dimensions, the bound is computed analytically, while in higher dimensions it is evaluated at early and late time via the OPE. These CFT predictions are then compared with a doubly-holographic setup where the CFT is interpreted as a reservoir for the radiation produced on an end-of-the-world brane. After finding the gravitational dual of a boundary local quench, we compute the time evolution of the holographic entanglement entropy, whose late-time behavior is in perfect agreement with the CFT predictions. In the brane+bath picture, unitarity of the time evolution is preserved thanks to the formation of an island. The holographic results can be recovered explicitly from the island formula, in the limit where the tension of the brane is close to the maximal value.

  4 citations

• Measurement-induced entanglement phase transitions in variational quantum circuits

  Roeland Wiersema, Cunlu Zhou, Juan Felipe Carrasquilla, Yong Baek Kim

  SciPost Phys. 14, 147 (2023) · published 8 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs), which classically optimize a parametrized quantum circuit to solve a computational task, promise to advance our understanding of quantum many-body systems and improve machine learning algorithms using near-term quantum computers. Prominent challenges associated with this family of quantum-classical hybrid algorithms are the control of quantum entanglement and quantum gradients linked to their classical optimization. Known as the barren plateau phenomenon, these quantum gradients may rapidly vanish in the presence of volume-law entanglement growth, which poses a serious obstacle to the practical utility of VQAs. Inspired by recent studies of measurement-induced entanglement transition in random circuits, we investigate the entanglement transition in variational quantum circuits endowed with intermediate projective measurements. Considering the Hamiltonian Variational Ansatz (HVA) for the XXZ model and the Hardware Efficient Ansatz (HEA), we observe a measurement-induced entanglement transition from volume-law to area-law with increasing measurement rate. Moreover, we provide evidence that the transition belongs to the same universality class of random unitary circuits. Importantly, the transition coincides with a “landscape transition” from severe to mild/no barren plateaus in the classical optimization. Our work may provide an avenue for improving the trainability of quantum circuits by incorporating intermediate measurement protocols in currently available quantum hardware.

• Strong Hilbert space fragmentation via emergent quantum drums in two dimensions

  Anwesha Chattopadhyay, Bhaskar Mukherjee, Krishnendu Sengupta, Arnab Sen

  SciPost Phys. 14, 146 (2023) · published 7 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce a disorder-free model of $S=1/2$ spins on the square lattice in a constrained Hilbert space where two up-spins are not allowed simultaneously on any two neighboring sites of the lattice. The interactions are given by ring-exchange terms on elementary plaquettes that conserve both the total magnetization as well as dipole moment. We show that this model provides a tractable example of strong Hilbert space fragmentation in two dimensions with typical initial states evading thermalization with respect to the full Hilbert space. Given any product state, the system can be decomposed into disjoint spatial regions made of edge and/or vertex sharing plaquettes that we dub as "quantum drums". These quantum drums come in many shapes and sizes and specifying the plaquettes that belong to a drum fixes its spectrum. The spectra of some small drums is calculated analytically. We study two bigger quasi-one-dimensional drums numerically, dubbed "wire" and a "junction of two wires" respectively. We find that these possess a chaotic spectrum but also support distinct families of quantum many-body scars that cause periodic revivals from different initial states. The wire is shown to be equivalent to the one-dimensional PXP chain with open boundaries, a paradigmatic model for quantum many-body scarring; while the junction of two wires represents a distinct constrained model.

  5 citations

• Arrested development and fragmentation in strongly-interacting Floquet systems

  Matthew Wampler, Israel Klich

  SciPost Phys. 14, 145 (2023) · published 7 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We explore how interactions can facilitate classical like dynamics in models with sequentially activated hopping. Specifically, we add local and short range interaction terms to the Hamiltonian and ask for conditions ensuring the evolution acts as a permutation on initial local number Fock states. We show that at certain values of hopping and interactions, determined by a set of Diophantine equations, such evolution can be realized. When only a subset of the Diophantine equations is satisfied the Hilbert space can be fragmented into frozen states, states obeying cellular automata like evolution, and subspaces where evolution mixes Fock states and is associated with eigenstates exhibiting high entanglement entropy and level repulsion.

  2 citations

• Universality class of the mode-locked glassy random laser

  Jacopo Niedda, Giacomo Gradenigo, Luca Leuzzi, Giorgio Parisi

  SciPost Phys. 14, 144 (2023) · published 6 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  By means of enhanced Monte Carlo numerical simulations parallelized on GPUs we study the critical properties of the spin-glass-like model for the mode-locked glassy random laser, a $4$-spin model with complex spins with a global spherical constraint and quenched random interactions. Implementing two different boundary conditions for the mode frequencies we identify the critical points and the critical indices of the random lasing phase transition with finite size scaling techniques. The outcome of the scaling analysis is that the mode-locked random laser universality class is compatible with a mean-field one, though different from the mean-field class of the Random Energy Model and of the glassy random laser in the narrow band approximation, that is, the fully connected version of the present model. The low temperature (high pumping) phase is finally characterized by means of the overlap distribution and evidence for the onset of replica symmetry breaking in the lasing regime is provided.

  3 citations