Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Many-body chaos and anomalous diffusion across thermal phase transitions in two dimensions

  Sibaram Ruidas, Sumilan Banerjee

  SciPost Phys. 11, 087 (2021) · published 3 November 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Chaos is an important characterization of classical dynamical systems. How is chaos linked to the long-time dynamics of collective modes across phases and phase transitions? We address this by studying chaos across Ising and Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions in classical XXZ model. We show that spatio-temporal chaotic properties have crossovers across the transitions and distinct temperature dependence in the high and low-temperature phases which show normal and anomalous diffusions, respectively. Our results also provide new insights into the dynamics of interacting quantum systems in the semiclassical limit.

  8 citations

• Periodically, Quasi-periodically, and Randomly Driven Conformal Field Theories (II): Furstenberg's Theorem and Exceptions to Heating Phases

  Xueda Wen, Yingfei Gu, Ashvin Vishwanath, Ruihua Fan

  SciPost Phys. 13, 082 (2022) · published 5 October 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this sequel (to [Phys. Rev. Res. 3, 023044(2021)], arXiv:2006.10072), we study randomly driven $(1+1)$ dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs), a family of quantum many-body systems with soluble non-equilibrium quantum dynamics. The sequence of driving Hamiltonians is drawn from an independent and identically distributed random ensemble. At each driving step, the deformed Hamiltonian only involves the energy-momentum density spatially modulated at a single wavelength and therefore induces a M\"obius transformation on the complex coordinates. The non-equilibrium dynamics is then determined by the corresponding sequence of M\"obius transformations, from which the Lyapunov exponent $\lambda_L$ is defined. We use Furstenberg's theorem to classify the dynamical phases and show that except for a few \emph{exceptional points} that do not satisfy Furstenberg's criteria, the random drivings always lead to a heating phase with the total energy growing exponentially in the number of driving steps $n$ and the subsystem entanglement entropy growing linearly in $n$ with a slope proportional to central charge $c$ and the Lyapunov exponent $\lambda_L$. On the contrary, the subsystem entanglement entropy at an exceptional point could grow as $\sqrt{n}$ while the total energy remains to grow exponentially. In addition, we show that the distributions of the operator evolution and the energy density peaks are also useful characterizations to distinguish the heating phase from the exceptional points: the heating phase has both distributions to be continuous, while the exceptional points could support finite convex combinations of Dirac measures depending on their specific type. In the end, we compare the field theory results with the lattice model calculations for both the entanglement and energy evolution and find remarkably good agreement.

  8 citations

• Asymmetric butterfly velocities in 2-local Hamiltonians

  Yong-Liang Zhang, Vedika Khemani

  SciPost Phys. 9, 024 (2020) · published 25 August 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The speed of information propagation is finite in quantum systems with local interactions. In many such systems, local operators spread ballistically in time and can be characterized by a ``butterfly velocity", which can be measured via out-of-time-ordered correlation functions. In general, the butterfly velocity can depend asymmetrically on the direction of information propagation. In this work, we construct a family of simple 2-local Hamiltonians for understanding the asymmetric hydrodynamics of operator spreading. Our models live on a one dimensional lattice and exhibit asymmetric butterfly velocities between the left and right spatial directions. This asymmetry is transparently understood in a free (non-interacting) limit of our model Hamiltonians, where the butterfly speed can be understood in terms of quasiparticle velocities.

  8 citations

• A simple mechanism for unconventional superconductivity in a repulsive fermion model

  Kevin Slagle, Yong Baek Kim

  SciPost Phys. 6, 016 (2019) · published 1 February 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Motivated by a scarcity of simple and analytically tractable models of superconductivity from strong repulsive interactions, we introduce a simple tight-binding lattice model of fermions with repulsive interactions that exhibits unconventional superconductivity (beyond BCS theory). The model resembles an idealized conductor-dielectric-conductor trilayer. The Cooper pair consists of electrons on opposite sides of the dielectric, which mediates the attraction. In the strong coupling limit, we use degenerate perturbation theory to show that the model reduces to a superconducting hard-core Bose-Hubbard model. Above the superconducting critical temperature, an analog of pseudo-gap physics results where the fermions remain Cooper paired with a large single-particle energy gap.

  8 citations

• Decoherence and pointer states in small antiferromagnets: A benchmark test

  Hylke C. Donker, Hans De Raedt, Mikhail I. Katsnelson

  SciPost Phys. 2, 010 (2017) · published 23 March 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the decoherence process of a four spin-1/2 antiferromagnet that is coupled to an environment of spin-1/2 particles. The preferred basis of the antiferromagnet is discussed in two limiting cases and we identify two $\it{exact}$ pointer states. Decoherence near the two limits is examined whereby entropy is used to quantify the $\it{robustness}$ of states against environmental coupling. We find that close to the quantum measurement limit, the self-Hamiltonian of the system of interest can become dynamically relevant on macroscopic timescales. We illustrate this point by explicitly constructing a state that is more robust than (generic) states diagonal in the system-environment interaction Hamiltonian.

  7 citations

• Phase transitions above the upper critical dimension

  Bertrand Berche, Tim Ellis, Yurij Holovatch, Ralph Kenna

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 60 (2022) · published 12 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These lecture notes provide an overview of the renormalization group (RG) as a successful framework to understand critical phenomena above the upper critical dimension $d_{\rm uc}$. After an introduction to the scaling picture of continuous phase transitions, we discuss the apparent failure of the Gaussian fixed point to capture scaling for Landau mean-field theory, which should hold in the thermodynamic limit above $d_{\rm uc}$. We recount how Fisher's dangerous-irrelevant-variable formalism applied to thermodynamic functions partially repairs the situation but at the expense of hyperscaling and finite-size scaling, both of which were, until recently, believed not to apply above $d_{\rm uc}$. We recall limitations of various attempts to match the RG with analytical and numerical results for Ising systems. We explain how the extension of dangerous irrelevancy to the correlation sector is key to marrying the above concepts into a comprehensive RG scaling picture that renders hyperscaling and finite-size scaling valid in all dimensions. We collect what we believe is the current status of the theory, including some new insights and results. This paper is in grateful memory of Michael Fisher who introduced many of the concepts discussed and who, half a century later, contributed to their advancement.

  7 citations

• Measurement of interaction-dressed Berry curvature and quantum metric in solids by optical absorption

  Wei Chen, Gero von Gersdorff

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 040 (2022) · published 16 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The quantum geometric properties of a Bloch state in momentum space are usually described by the Berry curvature and quantum metric. In realistic gapped materials where interactions and disorder render the Bloch state not a viable starting point, we generalize these concepts by introducing dressed Berry curvature and quantum metric at finite temperature, in which the effect of many-body interactions can be included perturbatively. These quantities are extracted from the charge polarization susceptibility caused by linearly or circularly polarized electric fields, whose spectral functions can be measured from momentum-resolved exciton or infrared absorption rate. As a concrete example, we investigate Chern insulators in the presence of impurity scattering, whose results suggest that the quantum geometric properties are protected by the energy gap against many-body interactions.

  7 citations

• Symmetry-protected gates of Majorana qubits in a high-$T_c$ higher-order topological superconductor platform

  Matthew F. Lapa, Meng Cheng, Yuxuan Wang

  SciPost Phys. 11, 086 (2021) · published 2 November 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We propose a platform for braiding Majorana non-Abelian anyons based on a heterostructure between a $d$-wave high-$T_c$ superconductor and a quantum spin-Hall insulator. It has been recently shown that such a setup for a quantum spin-Hall insulator leads to a pair of Majorana zero modes at each corner of the sample, and thus can be regarded as a higher-order topological superconductor. We show that upon applying a Zeeman field in the region, these Majorana modes split in space and can be manipulated for braiding processes by tuning the field and pairing phase. We show that such a setup can achieve full braiding, exchanging, and arbitrary phase gates (including the $\pi/8$ magic gates) of the Majorana zero modes, all of which are robust and protected by symmetries. Our analysis naturally includes interaction effects and can be generalized to cases with fractional bulk excitations. As many of the ingredients of our proposed platform have been realized in recent experiments, our results provide a new route toward universal topological quantum computation.

  7 citations

• On the dynamics of free-fermionic tau-functions at finite temperature

  Daniel Chernowitz, Oleksandr Gamayun

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 006 (2022) · published 31 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this work we explore an instance of the $\tau$-function of vertex type operators, specified in terms of a constant phase shift in a free-fermionic basis. From the physical point of view this $\tau$-function has multiple interpretations: as a correlator of Jordan-Wigner strings, a Loschmidt Echo in the Aharonov-Bohm effect, or the generating function of the local densities in the Tonks-Girardeau gas. We present the $\tau$-function as a form-factors series and tackle it from four vantage points: (i) we perform an exact summation and express it in terms of a Fredholm determinant in the thermodynamic limit, (ii) we use bosonization techniques to perform partial summations of soft modes around the Fermi surface to acquire the scaling at zero temperature, (iii) we derive large space and time asymptotic behavior for the thermal Fredholm determinant by relating it to effective form-factors with an asymptotically similar kernel, and (iv) we identify and sum the important basis elements directly through a tailor-made numerical algorithm for finite-entropy states in a free-fermionic Hilbert space. All methods confirm each other. We find that, in addition to the exponential decay in the finite-temperature case the dynamic correlation functions exhibit an extra power law in time, universal over any distribution and time scale.

  7 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.

  7 citations