Publications

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• Lecture notes on Berry phases and topology

  Barry Bradlyn, Mikel Iraola

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 51 (2022) · published 11 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In these notes, we review the role of Berry phases and topology in noninteracting electron systems. Topics including the adiabatic theorem, parallel transport, and Wannier functions are reviewed, with a focus on the connection to topological insulators.

  16 citations

• Effective theory for matter in non-perturbative cavity QED

  Juan Román-Roche, David Zueco

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 50 (2022) · published 10 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Starting from a general material system of $N$ particles coupled to a cavity, we use a coherent-state path integral formulation to produce a non-perturbative effective theory for the material degrees of freedom. We tackle the effects of image charges, the $A^2$ term and a multimode arbitrary-geometry cavity. The resulting (non-local) action has the photonic degrees of freedom replaced by an effective position-dependent interaction between the particles. In the large-$N$ limit, we discuss how the theory can be cast into an effective Hamiltonian where the cavity induced interactions are made explicit. The theory is applicable, beyond cavity QED, to any system where bulk material is linearly coupled to a diagonalizable bosonic bath. We highlight the differences of the theory with other well-known methods and numerically study its finite-size scaling on the Dicke model. Finally, we showcase its descriptive power with three examples: photon condensation, the 2D free electron gas in a cavity and the modification of magnetic interactions between molecular spins; recovering, condensing and extending some recent results in the literature.

  20 citations

• Pairing instabilities of the Yukawa-SYK models with controlled fermion incoherence

  Wonjune Choi, Omid Tavakol, Yong Baek Kim

  SciPost Phys. 12, 151 (2022) · published 9 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The interplay of non-Fermi liquid and superconductivity born out of strong dynamical interactions is at the heart of the physics of unconventional superconductivity. As a solvable platform of the strongly correlated superconductors, we study the pairing instabilities of the Yukawa-Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (Yukawa-SYK) model, which describes spin-1/2 fermions coupled to bosons by the random, all-to-all, spin-independent and dependent Yukawa interactions. In contrast to the previously studied models, the random Yukawa couplings are sampled from a collection of Gaussian ensembles whose variances follow a continuous distribution rather than being fixed to a constant. By tuning the analytic behaviour of the distribution, we could control the fermion incoherence to systematically examine various normal states ranging from the Fermi liquid to non-Fermi liquids that are different from the conformal solution of the SYK model with a constant variance. Using the linearised Eliashberg theory, we show that the onset of the unconventional spin-triplet pairing is preferred with the spin-dependent interactions while all pairing channels show instabilities with the spin-independent interactions. Although the interactions shorten the lifetime of the fermions in the non-Fermi liquid, the same interactions also dress the bosons to strengthen the tendency to pair the incoherent fermions. As a consequence, the onset temperature $T_c$ of the pairing is enhanced in the non-Fermi liquid compared to the case of the Fermi liquid.

  9 citations

• Scars from protected zero modes and beyond in $U(1)$ quantum link and quantum dimer models

  Saptarshi Biswas, Debasish Banerjee, Arnab Sen

  SciPost Phys. 12, 148 (2022) · published 6 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We demonstrate the presence of anomalous high-energy eigenstates, or many-body scars, in $U(1)$ quantum link and quantum dimer models on square and rectangular lattices. In particular, we consider the paradigmatic Rokhsar-Kivelson Hamiltonian $H=\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{kin}} + \lambda \mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{pot}}$ where $\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{pot}}$ ($\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{kin}}$) is defined as a sum of terms on elementary plaquettes that are diagonal (off-diagonal) in the computational basis. Both these interacting models possess an exponentially large number of mid-spectrum zero modes in system size at $\lambda=0$ that are protected by an index theorem preventing any mixing with the nonzero modes at this coupling. We classify different types of scars for $|\lambda| \lesssim \mathcal{O}(1)$ both at zero and finite winding number sectors complementing and significantly generalizing our previous work [Banerjee and Sen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 220601 (2021)]. The scars at finite $\lambda$ show a rich variety with those that are composed solely from the zero modes of $\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{kin}}$, those that contain an admixture of both the zero and the nonzero modes of $\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{kin}}$, and finally those composed solely from the nonzero modes of $\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{kin}}$. We give analytic expressions for certain "lego scars" for the quantum dimer model on rectangular lattices where one of the linear dimensions can be made arbitrarily large, with the building blocks (legos) being composed of emergent singlets and other more complicated entangled structures.

  34 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.

  23 citations

• Exact dynamical correlations of nonlocal operators in quadratic open Fermion systems: a characteristic function approach

  Qing-Wei Wang

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 027 (2022) · published 3 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The dynamical correlations of nonlocal operators in general quadratic open fermion systems is still a challenging problem. Here we tackle this problem by developing a new formulation of open fermion many-body systems, namely, the characteristic function approach. Illustrating the technique, we analyze a finite Kitaev chain with boundary dissipation and consider anyon-type nonlocal excitations. We give explicit formula for the Green's functions, demonstrating an asymmetric light cone induced by the anyon statistical parameter and an increasing relaxation rate with this parameter. We also analyze some other types of nonlocal operator correlations such as the full counting statistics of the charge number and the Loschmidt echo in a quench from the vacuum state. The former shows clear signature of a nonequilibrium quantum phase transition, while the later exhibits cusps at some critical times and hence demonstrates dynamical quantum phase transitions.

  7 citations

• Magnetic properties of a capped kagome molecule with 60 quantum spins

  Roman Rausch, Matthias Peschke, Cassian Plorin, Christoph Karrasch

  SciPost Phys. 12, 143 (2022) · published 2 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We compute ground-state properties of the isotropic, antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the sodalite cage geometry. This is a 60-spin spherical molecule with 24 vertex-sharing tetrahedra which can be regarded as a molecular analogue of a capped kagome lattice and which has been synthesized with high-spin rare-earth atoms. Here, we focus on the $S=1/2$ case where quantum effects are strongest. We employ the SU(2)-symmetric density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG). We find a threefold degenerate ground state that breaks the spatial symmetry and that splits up the molecule into three large parts which are almost decoupled from each other. This stands in sharp contrast to the behaviour of most known spherical molecules. On a methodological level, the disconnection leads to ``glassy dynamics'' within the DMRG that cannot be targeted via standard techniques. In the presence of finite magnetic fields, we find broad magnetization plateaus at 4/5, 3/5, and 1/5 of the saturation, which one can understand in terms of localized magnons, singlets, and doublets which are again nearly decoupled from each other. At the saturation field, the zero-point entropy is $S=\ln(182)\approx 5.2$ in units of the Boltzmann constant.

  5 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.

  23 citations

• Crystalline Weyl semimetal phase in Quantum Spin Hall systems under magnetic fields

  Fernando Dominguez, Benedikt Scharf, Ewelina M. Hankiewicz

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 024 (2022) · published 28 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate an unconventional topological phase transition that occurs in quantum spin Hall (QSH) systems when applying an external in-plane magnetic field. We show that this transition between QSH and trivial insulator phases is separated by a stable topological gapless phase, which is protected by the combination of particle-hole and reflection symmetries, and thus, we dub it as crystalline Weyl semimetal. We explore the stability of this new phase when particle-hole symmetry breaking terms are present. Especially, we predict a robust unconventional topological phase transition to be visible for materials described by Kane and Mele model even if particle-hole symmetry is significantly broken.

  5 citations

• Balanced partial entanglement and mixed state correlations

  Hugo A. Camargo, Pratik Nandy, Qiang Wen, Haocheng Zhong

  SciPost Phys. 12, 137 (2022) · published 21 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Recently in Ref. [1], one of the authors introduced the balanced partial entanglement (BPE), which has been proposed to be dual to the entanglement wedge cross-section (EWCS). In this paper, we explicitly demonstrate that the BPE could be considered as a proper measure of the total intrinsic correlation between two subsystems in a mixed state. The total correlation includes certain crossing correlations, which are minimized by particular balance conditions. By constructing a class of purifications from Euclidean path-integrals, we find that the balanced crossing correlations show universality and can be considered as the generalization of the Markov gap for the canonical purification. We also test the relation between the BPE and the EWCS in three-dimensional asymptotically flat holography. We find that the balanced crossing correlation vanishes for the field theory invariant under BMS$_3$ symmetry (BMSFT) and dual to the Einstein gravity, indicating the possibility of a perfect Markov recovery. We further elucidate these crossing correlations as a signature of tripartite entanglement and explain their interpretation in both AdS and non-AdS holography.

  24 citations