Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Multifractality and its role in anomalous transport in the disordered XXZ spin-chain

  David J. Luitz, Ivan M. Khaymovich, Yevgeny Bar Lev

  SciPost Phys. Core 2, 006 (2020) · published 30 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The disordered XXZ model is a prototype model of the many-body localization transition (MBL). Despite numerous studies of this model, the available numerical evidence of multifractality of its eigenstates is not very conclusive due severe finite size effects. Moreover it is not clear if similarly to the case of single-particle physics, multifractal properties of the many-body eigenstates are related to anomalous transport, which is observed in this model. In this work, using a state-of-the-art, massively parallel, numerically exact method, we study systems of up to 24 spins and show that a large fraction of the delocalized phase flows towards ergodicity in the thermodynamic limit, while a region immediately preceding the MBL transition appears to be multifractal in this limit. We discuss the implication of our finding on the mechanism of subdiffusive transport.

  7 citations

• Operator Entanglement in Local Quantum Circuits II: Solitons in Chains of Qubits

  Bruno Bertini, Pavel Kos, Tomaz Prosen

  SciPost Phys. 8, 068 (2020) · published 28 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We provide exact results for the dynamics of local-operator entanglement in quantum circuits with two-dimensional wires featuring ultralocal solitons, i.e. single-site operators which, up to a phase, are simply shifted by the time evolution. We classify all circuits allowing for ultralocal solitons and show that only dual-unitary circuits can feature moving ultralocal solitons. Then, we rigorously prove that if a circuit has an ultralocal soliton moving to the left (right), the entanglement of local operators initially supported on even (odd) sites saturates to a constant value and its dynamics can be computed exactly. Importantly, this does not bound the growth of complexity in chiral circuits, where solitons move only in one direction, say to the left. Indeed, in this case we observe numerically that operators on the odd sublattice have unbounded entanglement. Finally, we present a closed-form expression for the local-operator entanglement entropies in circuits with ultralocal solitons moving in both directions. Our results hold irrespectively of integrability.

  5 citations

• Operator Entanglement in Local Quantum Circuits I: Chaotic Dual-Unitary Circuits

  Bruno Bertini, Pavel Kos, Tomaz Prosen

  SciPost Phys. 8, 067 (2020) · published 28 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The entanglement in operator space is a well established measure for the complexity of the quantum many-body dynamics. In particular, that of local operators has recently been proposed as dynamical chaos indicator, i.e. as a quantity able to discriminate between quantum systems with integrable and chaotic dynamics. For chaotic systems the local-operator entanglement is expected to grow linearly in time, while it is expected to grow at most logarithmically in the integrable case. Here we study local-operator entanglement in dual-unitary quantum circuits, a class of "statistically solvable" quantum circuits that we recently introduced. We identify a class of "completely chaotic" dual-unitary circuits where the local-operator entanglement grows linearly and we provide a conjecture for its asymptotic behaviour which is in excellent agreement with the numerical results. Interestingly, our conjecture also predicts a "phase transition" in the slope of the local-operator entanglement when varying the parameters of the circuits.

  13 citations

• On duality between Cosserat elasticity and fractons

  Andrey Gromov, Piotr Surówka

  SciPost Phys. 8, 065 (2020) · published 21 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a dual formulation of the Cosserat theory of elasticity. In this theory a local element of an elastic body is described in terms of local displacement and local orientation. Upon the duality transformation these degrees of freedom map onto a coupled theory of a vector-valued one-form gauge field and an ordinary $U(1)$ gauge field. We discuss the degrees of freedom in the corresponding gauge theories, the defect matter and coupling to the curved space.

  3 citations

• A bound on thermal relativistic correlators at large spacelike momenta

  Souvik Banerjee, Kyriakos Papadodimas, Suvrat Raju, Prasant Samantray, Pushkal Shrivastava

  SciPost Phys. 8, 064 (2020) · published 20 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider thermal Wightman correlators in a relativistic quantum field theory in the limit where the spatial momenta of the insertions become large while their frequencies stay fixed. We show that, in this limit, the size of these correlators is bounded by $e^{-\beta R}$, where $R$ is the radius of the smallest sphere that contains the polygon formed by the momenta. We show that perturbative quantum field theories can saturate this bound through suitably high-order loop diagrams. We also consider holographic theories in $d$-spacetime dimensions, where we show that the leading two-point function of generalized free-fields saturates the bound in $d = 2$ and is {\em below} the bound for $d > 2$. We briefly discuss interactions in holographic theories and conclude with a discussion of several open problems.

• The negativity contour: a quasi-local measure of entanglement for mixed states

  Jonah Kudler-Flam, Hassan Shapourian, Shinsei Ryu

  SciPost Phys. 8, 063 (2020) · published 20 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this paper, we study the entanglement structure of mixed states in quantum many-body systems using the $\textit{negativity contour}$, a local measure of entanglement that determines which real-space degrees of freedom in a subregion are contributing to the logarithmic negativity and with what magnitude. We construct an explicit contour function for Gaussian states using the fermionic partial-transpose. We generalize this contour function to generic many-body systems using a natural combination of derivatives of the logarithmic negativity. Though the latter negativity contour function is not strictly positive for all quantum systems, it is simple to compute and produces reasonable and interesting results. In particular, it rigorously satisfies the positivity condition for all holographic states and those obeying the quasi-particle picture. We apply this formalism to quantum field theories with a Fermi surface, contrasting the entanglement structure of Fermi liquids and holographic (hyperscale violating) non-Fermi liquids. The analysis of non-Fermi liquids show anomalous temperature dependence of the negativity depending on the dynamical critical exponent. We further compute the negativity contour following a quantum quench and discuss how this may clarify certain aspects of thermalization.

  2 citations

• Asymptotic temperature of a lossy condensate

  Isabelle Bouchoule, Max Schemmer

  SciPost Phys. 8, 060 (2020) · published 16 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We monitor the time evolution of the temperature of phononic collective modes in a one-dimensional quasicondensate submitted to losses. At long times the ratio between the temperature and the energy scale $mc^2$, where $m$ is the atomic mass and $c$ the sound velocity takes, within a precision of 20\%, an asymptotic value. This asymptotic value is observed while $mc^2$ decreases in time by a factor as large as 2.5. Moreover this ratio is shown to be independent on the loss rate and on the strength of interactions. These results confirm theoretical predictions and the measured stationary ratio is in quantitative agreement with the theoretical calculations.

  1 citation

• Areas and entropies in BFSS/gravity duality

  Tarek Anous, Joanna L. Karczmarek, Eric Mintun, Mark Van Raamsdonk, Benson Way

  SciPost Phys. 8, 057 (2020) · published 15 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The BFSS matrix model provides an example of gauge-theory / gravity duality where the gauge theory is a model of ordinary quantum mechanics with no spatial subsystems. If there exists a general connection between areas and entropies in this model similar to the Ryu-Takayanagi formula, the entropies must be more general than the usual subsystem entanglement entropies. In this note, we first investigate the extremal surfaces in the geometries dual to the BFSS model at zero and finite temperature. We describe a method to associate regulated areas to these surfaces and calculate the areas explicitly for a family of surfaces preserving $SO(8)$ symmetry, both at zero and finite temperature. We then discuss possible entropic quantities in the matrix model that could be dual to these regulated areas.

  1 citation

• Molecular dynamics simulation of entanglement spreading in generalized hydrodynamics

  Márton Mestyán, Vincenzo Alba

  SciPost Phys. 8, 055 (2020) · published 9 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider a molecular dynamics method, the so-called flea gas for computing the evolution of entanglement after inhomogeneous quantum quenches in an integrable quantum system. In such systems the evolution of local observables is described at large space-time scales by the Generalized Hydrodynamics approach, which is based on the presence of stable, ballistically propagating quasiparticles. Recently it was shown that the GHD approach can be joined with the quasiparticle picture of entanglement evolution, providing results for entanglement growth after inhomogeneous quenches. Here we apply the flea gas simulation of GHD to obtain numerical results for entanglement growth. We implement the flea gas dynamics for the gapped anisotropic Heisenberg XXZ spin chain, considering quenches from globally homogeneous and piecewise homogeneous initial states. While the flea gas method applied to the XXZ chain is not exact even in the scaling limit (in contrast to the Lieb--Liniger model), it yields a very good approximation of analytical results for entanglement growth in the cases considered. Furthermore, we obtain the {\it full-time} dynamics of the mutual information after quenches from inhomogeneous settings, for which no analytical results are available.

  4 citations

• Zero temperature momentum distribution of an impurity in a polaron state of one-dimensional Fermi and Tonks-Girardeau gases

  Oleksandr Gamayun, Oleg Lychkovskiy, Mikhail B. Zvonarev

  SciPost Phys. 8, 053 (2020) · published 7 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the momentum distribution function of a single distinguishable impurity particle which formed a polaron state in a gas of either free fermions or Tonks-Girardeau bosons in one spatial dimension. We obtain a Fredholm determinant representation of the distribution function for the Bethe ansatz solvable model of an impurity-gas δ-function interaction potential at zero temperature, in both repulsive and attractive regimes. We deduce from this representation the fourth power decay at a large momentum, and a weakly divergent (quasi-condensate) peak at a finite momentum. We also demonstrate that the momentum distribution function in the limiting case of infinitely strong interaction can be expressed through a correlation function of the one-dimensional impenetrable anyons.

  1 citation