Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Spectral properties, localization transition and multifractal eigenvectors of the Laplacian on heterogeneous networks

  Jeferson D. da Silva, Diego Tapias, Peter Sollich, Fernando L. Metz

  SciPost Phys. 18, 047 (2025) · published 7 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the spectral properties and eigenvector statistics of the Laplacian on highly-connected networks with random coupling strengths and a gamma distribution of rescaled degrees. The spectral density, the distribution of the local density of states, the singularity spectrum and the multifractal exponents of this model exhibit a rich behaviour as a function of the first two moments of the coupling strengths and the variance of the rescaled degrees. In the case of random coupling strengths, the spectral density diverges within the bulk of the spectrum when degree fluctuations are strong enough. The emergence of this singular behaviour marks a transition from non-ergodic delocalized states to localized eigenvectors that exhibit pronounced multifractal scaling. For constant coupling strengths, the bulk of the spectrum is characterized by a regular spectral density. In this case, the corresponding eigenvectors display localization properties reminiscent of the critical point of the Anderson localization transition on random graphs.

  1 citation

• The thermoelectric conversion efficiency problem: Insights from the electron gas thermodynamics close to a phase transition

  I. Khomchenko, A. Ryzhov, F. Maculewicz, F. Kurth, R. Hühne, A. Golombek, M. Schleberger, C. Goupil, Ph. Lecoeur, A. Böhmer, G. Benenti, G. Schierning, H. Ouerdane

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 015 (2025) · published 7 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The bottleneck in modern thermoelectric power generation and cooling is the low energy conversion efficiency of thermoelectric materials. The detrimental effects of lattice phonons on performance can be mitigated, but achieving a high thermoelectric power factor remains a major problem because the Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity cannot be jointly increased. The conducting electron gas in thermoelectric materials is the actual working fluid that performs the energy conversion, so its properties determine the maximum efficiency that can theoretically be achieved. By relating the thermoelastic properties of the electronic working fluid to its transport properties (considering noninteracting electron systems), we show why the performance of conventional semiconductor materials is doomed to remain low. Analyzing the temperature dependence of the power factor theoretically in 2D systems and experimentally in a thin film, we find that in the fluctuation regimes of an electronic phase transition, the thermoelectric power factor can significantly increase owing to the increased compressibility of the electron gas. We also calculate the ideal thermoelectric conversion efficiency in noninteracting electron systems across a wide temperature range neglecting phonon effects and dissipative coupling to the heat source and sink. Our results show that driving the electronic system to the vicinity of a phase transition can indeed be an innovative route to strong efficiency enhancement, but at the cost of an extremely narrow temperature range for the use of such materials, which in turn precludes potential development for the desired wide range of thermoelectric energy conversion applications.

• Population dynamics of Schrödinger cats

  Foster Thompson, Alex Kamenev

  SciPost Phys. 18, 046 (2025) · published 6 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We demonstrate an exact equivalence between classical population dynamics and Lindbladian evolution admitting a dark state and obeying a set of certain local symmetries. We then introduce quantum population dynamics as models in which this local symmetry condition is relaxed. This allows for non-classical processes in which animals behave like Schrödinger's cat and enter superpositions of live and dead states, thus resulting in coherent superpositions of different population numbers. We develop a field theory treatment of quantum population models as a synthesis of Keldysh and third quantization techniques and draw comparisons to the stochastic Doi-Peliti field theory description of classical population models. We apply this formalism to study a prototypical "Schrödinger cat" population model on a $d$-dimensional lattice, which exhibits a phase transition between a dark extinct phase and an active phase that supports a stable quantum population. Using a perturbative renormalization group approach, we find a critical scaling of the Schrödinger cat population distinct from that observed in both classical population dynamics and usual quantum phase transitions.

  2 citations

• Codebase release 1.0 for DanceQ

  Robin Schäfer, David J. Luitz

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 48-r1.0 (2025) · published 5 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · src

  The complexity of quantum many-body problems scales exponentially with the size of the system, rendering any finite-size scaling analysis a formidable challenge. This is particularly true for methods based on the full representation of the wave function, where one simply accepts the enormous Hilbert space dimensions and performs linear algebra operations, e.g., for finding the ground state of the Hamiltonian. If the system satisfies an underlying symmetry where an operator with a degenerate spectrum commutes with the Hamiltonian, it can be block-diagonalized, thus reducing the complexity at the expense of additional bookkeeping. At the most basic level required for Krylov space techniques (like the Lanczos algorithm), it is necessary to implement a matrix-vector product of a block of the Hamiltonian with arbitrary block-wavefunctions, potentially without holding the Hamiltonian block in memory. An efficient implementation of this operation requires the calculation of the position of an arbitrary basis vector in the canonical ordering of the basis of the block. We present here an elegant and powerful, multi-dimensional approach to this problem for the $U(1)$ symmetry appearing in problems with particle number conservation. Our divide-and-conquer algorithm uses multiple subsystems and hence generalizes previous approaches to make them scalable. In addition to the theoretical presentation of our algorithm, we provide DanceQ, a flexible and modern – header only – C++20 implementation to manipulate, enumerate, and map to its index any basis state in a given particle number sector as open source software under https://DanceQ.gitlab.io/danceq.

  2 citations

• DanceQ: High-performance library for number conserving bases

  Robin Schäfer, David J. Luitz

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 48 (2025) · published 5 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The complexity of quantum many-body problems scales exponentially with the size of the system, rendering any finite-size scaling analysis a formidable challenge. This is particularly true for methods based on the full representation of the wave function, where one simply accepts the enormous Hilbert space dimensions and performs linear algebra operations, e.g., for finding the ground state of the Hamiltonian. If the system satisfies an underlying symmetry where an operator with a degenerate spectrum commutes with the Hamiltonian, it can be block-diagonalized, thus reducing the complexity at the expense of additional bookkeeping. At the most basic level required for Krylov space techniques (like the Lanczos algorithm), it is necessary to implement a matrix-vector product of a block of the Hamiltonian with arbitrary block-wavefunctions, potentially without holding the Hamiltonian block in memory. An efficient implementation of this operation requires the calculation of the position of an arbitrary basis vector in the canonical ordering of the basis of the block. We present here an elegant and powerful, multi-dimensional approach to this problem for the $U(1)$ symmetry appearing in problems with particle number conservation. Our divide-and-conquer algorithm uses multiple subsystems and hence generalizes previous approaches to make them scalable. In addition to the theoretical presentation of our algorithm, we provide DanceQ, a flexible and modern – header only – C++20 implementation to manipulate, enumerate, and map to its index any basis state in a given particle number sector as open source software under https://DanceQ.gitlab.io/danceq.

  2 citations

• Difference equations: From Berry connections to the Coulomb branch

  Andrea E. V. Ferrari, Daniel Zhang

  SciPost Phys. 18, 045 (2025) · published 5 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In recent work, we demonstrated that a spectral variety for the Berry connection of a 2d $\mathcal{N}=(2,2)$ GLSM with Kähler vacuum moduli space $X$ and Abelian flavour symmetry is the support of a sheaf induced by a certain action on the equivariant quantum cohomology of $X$. This action could be quantised to first-order matrix difference equations obeyed by brane amplitudes, and by taking the conformal limit, vortex partition functions. In this article, we elucidate how some of these results may be recovered from a 3d perspective, by placing the 2d theory at a boundary and gauging the flavour symmetry via a bulk A-twisted 3d $\mathcal{N}=4$ gauge theory (a sandwich construction). We interpret the above action as that of the bulk Coulomb branch algebra on boundary twisted chiral operators. This relates our work to recent constructions of actions of Coulomb branch algebras on quantum equivariant cohomology, providing a novel correspondence between these actions and spectral data of generalised periodic monopoles. The effective IR description of the 2d theory in terms of a twisted superpotential allows for explicit computations of these actions, which we demonstrate for Abelian GLSMs.

• Extracting the symmetries of nonequilibrium quantum many-body systems

  Aleksandr N. Mikheev, Viktoria Noel, Ido Siovitz, Helmut Strobel, Markus K. Oberthaler, Jürgen Berges

  SciPost Phys. 18, 044 (2025) · published 4 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Symmetries play a pivotal role in our understanding of the properties of quantum many-body systems. While there are theorems and a well-established toolbox for systems in thermal equilibrium, much less is known about the role of symmetries and their connection to dynamics out of equilibrium. This arises due to the direct link between a system's thermal state and its Hamiltonian, which is generally not the case for nonequilibrium dynamics. Here we present a pathway to identify the effective symmetries and to extract them from data in nonequilibrium quantum many-body systems. Our approach is based on exact relations between correlation functions involving different numbers of spatial points, which can be viewed as nonequilibrium versions of (equal-time) Ward identities encoding the symmetries of the system. We derive symmetry witnesses, which are particularly suitable for the analysis of measured or simulated data at different snapshots in time. To demonstrate the potential of the approach, we apply our method to numerical and experimental data for a spinor Bose gas. We investigate the important question of a dynamical restoration of an explicitly broken symmetry of the Hamiltonian by the initial state. Remarkably, it is found that effective symmetry restoration can occur long before the system equilibrates. We also use the approach to define and identify spontaneous symmetry breaking far from equilibrium, which is of great relevance for applications to nonequilibrium phase transitions. Our work opens new avenues for the classification and analysis of quantum as well as classical many-body dynamics in a large variety of systems, ranging from ultracold quantum gases to cosmology.

  2 citations

• Fractional domain wall statistics in spin chains with anomalous symmetries

  Jose Garre Rubio, Norbert Schuch

  SciPost Phys. 18, 043 (2025) · published 4 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the statistics of domain wall excitations in quantum spin chains. We focus on systems with finite symmetry groups represented by matrix product unitaries (MPUs), i.e. finite depth quantum circuits. Such symmetries can be anomalous, in which case gapped phases which they support must break the symmetry. The lowest lying excitations of those systems are thus domain wall excitations. We investigate the behavior of these domain walls under exchange, and find that they can exhibit non-trivial exchange statistics. This statistics is completely determined by the anomaly of the symmetry, and we provide a direct relation between the known classification of MPU symmetry actions on ground states and the domain wall statistics. Already for the simplest case of a $\mathbb Z_2$ symmetry, we obtain that the presence of an anomalous MPU symmetry gives rise to domain wall excitations which behave neither as bosons nor as fermions, but rather exhibit fractional statistics. Finally, we show that the exchange statistics of domain walls is a physically accessible quantity, by devising explicit measurement operators through which it can be determined.

  2 citations

• Kinetics of quantum reaction-diffusion systems

  Federico Gerbino, Igor Lesanovsky, Gabriele Perfetto

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 014 (2025) · published 4 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We discuss many-body fermionic and bosonic systems subject to dissipative particle losses in arbitrary spatial dimensions $d$, within the Keldysh path-integral formulation of the quantum master equation. This open quantum dynamics represents a generalisation of classical reaction-diffusion dynamics to the quantum realm. We first show how initial conditions can be introduced in the Keldysh path integral via boundary terms. We then study binary annihilation reactions $A+A\to \emptyset$, for which we derive a Boltzmann-like kinetic equation. The ensuing algebraic decay in time for the particle density depends on the particle statistics. In order to model possible experimental implementations with cold atoms, for fermions in $d=1$ we further discuss inhomogeneous cases involving the presence of a trapping potential. In this context, we quantify the irreversibility of the dynamics studying the time evolution of the system entropy for different quenches of the trapping potential. We find that the system entropy features algebraic decay for confining quenches, while it saturates in deconfined scenarios.

  2 citations

• Semi-visible jets, energy-based models, and self-supervision

  Luigi Favaro, Michael Krämer, Tanmoy Modak, Tilman Plehn, Jan Rüschkamp

  SciPost Phys. 18, 042 (2025) · published 3 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present DarkCLR, a novel framework for detecting semi-visible jets at the LHC. DarkCLR uses a self-supervised contrastive-learning approach to create observables that are approximately invariant under relevant transformations. We use background-enhanced data to create a sensitive representation and evaluate the representations using a CLR-inspired anomaly score and a normalized autoencoder as density estimators. Our results show a remarkable sensitivity for a wide range of semi-visible jets and are more robust than a supervised classifier trained on a specific signal.

  4 citations