Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Slightly broken higher-spin current in bosonic and fermionic QED in the large-$N$ limit

  Zheng Zhou, Yin-Chen He

  SciPost Phys. 15, 072 (2023) · published 29 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the slightly broken higher-spin currents in various CFTs with U(1) gauge field, including the tricritical QED, scalar QED, fermionic QED and QED-Gross-Neveu-Yukawa theory. We calculate their anomalous dimension by making use of the classical non-conservation equation and the equations of motion. We find a logarithmic asymptotic behaviour ($\gamma_s\sim 16/(N\pi^2)$ log s ) of the anomalous dimension at large spin $s$, which is different from other interacting CFTs without gauge fields and may indicate certain unique features of gauge theories. We also study slightly broken higher-spin currents of the SU(N)$_1$ WZW model at $d=2+\epsilon$ dimensions by formulating them as the QED theory, and we again find its anomalous dimension has a logarithmic asymptotic behaviour with respect to spin. This result resolves the mystery regarding the mechanism of breaking higher spin currents of Virasoro symmetry at $d=2+\epsilon$ dimensions, and may be applicable to other interesting problems such as the $2+\epsilon$ expansion of Ising CFT.

  3 citations

• Probing Chern number by opacity and topological phase transition by a nonlocal Chern marker

  Paolo Molignini, Bastien Lapierre, Ramasubramanian Chitra, Wei Chen

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 059 (2023) · published 29 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In 2D semiconductors and insulators, the Chern number of the valence band Bloch state is an important quantity that has been linked to various material properties, such as the topological order. We elaborate that the opacity of 2D materials to circularly polarized light over a wide range of frequencies, measured in units of the fine structure constant, can be used to extract a spectral function that frequency-integrates to the Chern number, offering a simple optical experiment to measure it. This method is subsequently generalized to finite temperature and locally on every lattice site by a linear response theory, which helps to extract the Chern marker that maps the Chern number to lattice sites. The long range response in our theory corresponds to a Chern correlator that acts like the internal fluctuation of the Chern marker, and is found to be enhanced in the topologically nontrivial phase. Finally, from the Fourier transform of the valence band Berry curvature, a nonlocal Chern marker is further introduced, whose decay length diverges at topological phase transitions and therefore serves as a faithful indicator of the transitions, and moreover can be interpreted as a Wannier state correlation function. The concepts discussed in this work explore multi-faceted aspects of topology and should help address the impact of system inhomogeneities.

  3 citations

• A range three elliptic deformation of the Hubbard model

  Marius de Leeuw, Chiara Paletta, Balázs Pozsgay

  SciPost Phys. 15, 071 (2023) · published 28 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this paper we present a new integrable deformation of the Hubbard model. Our deformation gives rise to a range 3 interaction term in the Hamiltonian which does not preserve spin or particle number. This is the first non-trivial medium range deformation of the Hubbard model that is integrable. Our model can be mapped to a new integrable nearest-neighbour model via a duality transformation. The resulting nearest-neighbour model also breaks spin conservation. We compute the $R$-matrices for our models, and find that there is a very unusual dependence on the spectral parameters in terms of the elliptic amplitude.

  1 citation

• Impurity Knight shift in quantum dot Josephson junctions

  Luka Pavešić, Marta Pita Vidal, Arno Bargerbos, Rok Žitko

  SciPost Phys. 15, 070 (2023) · published 24 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Spectroscopy of a Josephson junction device with an embedded quantum dot reveals the presence of a contribution to level splitting in external magnetic field that is proportional to $\cos\phi$, where $\phi$ is the gauge-invariant phase difference across the junction. To elucidate the origin of this unanticipated effect, we systematically study the Zeeman splitting of spinful subgap states in the superconducting Anderson impurity model. The magnitude of the splitting is renormalized by the exchange interaction between the local moment and the continuum of Bogoliubov quasiparticles in a variant of the Knight shift phenomenon. The leading term in the shift is linear in the hybridisation strength $\Gamma$ (quadratic in electron hopping), while the subleading term is quadratic in $\Gamma$ (quartic in electron hopping) and depends on $\phi$ due to spin-polarization-dependent corrections to the Josephson energy of the device. The amplitude of the $\phi$-dependent part is largest for experimentally relevant parameters beyond the perturbative regime where it is investigated using numerical renormalization group calculations. Such magnetic-field-tunable coupling between the quantum dot spin and the Josephson current could find wide use in superconducting spintronics.

  3 citations

• Constructing non-Abelian quantum spin liquids using combinatorial gauge symmetry

  Dmitry Green, Claudio Chamon

  SciPost Phys. 15, 067 (2023) · published 22 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We construct Hamiltonians with only 1- and 2-body interactions that exhibit an exact non-Abelian gauge symmetry (specifically, combinatiorial gauge symmetry). Our spin Hamiltonian realizes the quantum double associated to the group of quaternions. It contains only ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic $ZZ$ interactions, plus longitudinal and transverse fields, and therefore is an explicit example of a spin Hamiltonian with no sign problem that realizes a non-Abelian topological phase. In addition to the spin model, we propose a superconducting quantum circuit version with the same symmetry.

  1 citation

• Separability and entanglement of resonating valence-bond states

  Gilles Parez, Clément Berthiere, William Witczak-Krempa

  SciPost Phys. 15, 066 (2023) · published 21 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate separability and entanglement of Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) states and resonating valence-bond (RVB) states. These states play a prominent role in condensed matter physics, as they can describe quantum spin liquids and quantum critical states of matter, depending on their underlying lattices. For dimer RK states on arbitrary tileable graphs, we prove the exact separability of the reduced density matrix of $k$ disconnected subsystems, implying the absence of bipartite and multipartite entanglement between the subsystems. For more general RK states with local constraints, we argue separability in the thermodynamic limit, and show that any local RK state has zero logarithmic negativity, even if the density matrix is not exactly separable. In the case of adjacent subsystems, we find an exact expression for the logarithmic negativity in terms of partition functions of the underlying statistical model. For RVB states, we show separability for disconnected subsystems up to exponentially small terms in the distance $d$ between the subsystems, and that the logarithmic negativity is exponentially suppressed with $d$. We argue that separability does hold in the scaling limit, even for arbitrarily small ratio $d/L$, where $L$ is the characteristic size of the subsystems. Our results hold for arbitrary lattices, and encompass a large class of RK and RVB states, which include certain gapped quantum spin liquids and gapless quantum critical systems.

  2 citations

• Skyrmion jellyfish in driven chiral magnets

  Nina del Ser, Vivek Lohani

  SciPost Phys. 15, 065 (2023) · published 17 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Chiral magnets can host topological particles known as skyrmions which carry an exactly quantised topological charge $Q=-1$. In the presence of an oscillating magnetic field $B_1(t)$, a single skyrmion embedded in a ferromagnetic background will start to move with constant velocity v$_{trans}$. The mechanism behind this motion is similar to the one used by a jellyfish when it swims through water. We show that the skyrmion's motion is a universal phenomenon, arising in any magnetic system with translational modes. By projecting the equation of motion onto the skyrmion's translational modes and going to quadratic order in $B_1(t)$, we obtain an analytical expression for v$_{trans}$ as a function of the system's linear response. The linear response and consequently v$_{trans}$ are influenced by the skyrmion's internal modes and scattering states, as well as by the ferromagnetic background's Kittel mode. The direction and speed of v$_{trans}$ can be controlled by changing the polarisation, frequency and phase of the driving field $B_1(t)$. For systems with small Gilbert damping parameter $\alpha$, we identify two distinct physical mechanisms used by the skyrmion to move. At low driving frequencies, the skyrmion's motion is driven by friction, and $v_{trans}\sim\alpha$, whereas at higher frequencies above the ferromagnetic gap the skyrmion moves by magnon emission, and $v_{trans}$ becomes independent of $\alpha$.

  1 citation

• Out-of-equilibrium dynamics of two interacting optically-trapped particles

  Victor S. Dotsenko, Alberto Imparato, Pascal Viot, Gleb Oshanin

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 056 (2023) · published 17 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a theoretical analysis of a non-equilibrium dynamics in a model system consisting of two particles which move randomly on a plane. The two particles interact via a harmonic potential, experience their own (independent from each other) noises characterized by two different temperatures $T_1$ and $T_2$, and each particle is being held by its own optical tweezer. Such a system with two particles coupled by hydrodynamic interactions was previously realised experimentally in Bérut et al. [EPL 107, 60004 (2014)], and the difference between two temperatures has been achieved by exerting an additional noise on either of the tweezers. Framing the dynamics in terms of two coupled over-damped Langevin equations, we show that the system reaches a non-equilibrium steady-state with non-zero (for $T_1 \neq T_2$) probability currents that possess non-zero curls. As a consequence, in this system the particles are continuously spinning around their centers of mass in a completely synchronized way - the curls of currents at the instantaneous positions of two particles have the same magnitude and sign. Moreover, we demonstrate that the components of currents of two particles are strongly correlated and undergo a rotational motion along closed elliptic orbits.

  2 citations

• Quantum chaos in 2D gravity

  Alexander Altland, Boris Post, Julian Sonner, Jeremy van der Heijden, Erik Verlinde

  SciPost Phys. 15, 064 (2023) · published 16 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a quantitative and fully non-perturbative description of the ergodic phase of quantum chaos in the setting of two-dimensional gravity. To this end we describe the doubly non-perturbative completion of semiclassical 2D gravity in terms of its associated universe field theory. The guiding principle of our analysis is a flavor-matrix theory (fMT) description of the ergodic phase of holographic gravity, which exhibits $\mathrm{U}(n|n)$ causal symmetry breaking and restoration. JT gravity and its 2D-gravity cousins alone do not realize an action principle with causal symmetry, however we demonstrate that their universe field theory, the Kodaira-Spencer (KS) theory of gravity, does. After directly deriving the fMT from brane-antibrane correlators in KS theory, we show that causal symmetry breaking and restoration can be understood geometrically in terms of different (topological) D-brane vacua. We interpret our results in terms of an open-closed string duality between holomorphic Chern-Simons theory and its closed-string equivalent, the KS theory of gravity. Emphasis will be put on relating these geometric principles to the characteristic spectral correlations of the quantum ergodic phase.

  8 citations

• An exact local mapping from clock-spins to fermions

  Simone Traverso, Christoph Fleckenstein, Maura Sassetti, Niccolò Traverso Ziani

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 055 (2023) · published 15 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Clock-spin models are attracting great interest, due to both their rich phase diagram and their connection to parafermions. In this context, we derive an exact local mapping from clock-spin to fermionic partition functions. Such mapping, akin to techniques introduced by Fedotov and Popov for spin $\frac{1}{2}$ chains, grants access to well established numerical tools for the perturbative treatment of fermionic systems in the clock-spin framework. Moreover, in one dimension, it allows to use bosonization to access the low energy properties of clock-spin models. Finally, aside from the direct application in clock-spin models, this new mapping enables the conception of interesting fermionic models, based on the clock-spin counterparts.