SciPost Submission Page
Quantum simulations made easy plane
by Andreas M. Läuchli, R. Moessner
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Andreas Läuchli |
| Submission information | |
|---|---|
| Preprint Link: | https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.04380v1 (pdf) |
| Date submitted: | 2016-12-04 01:00 |
| Submitted by: | Läuchli, Andreas |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
|---|---|
| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
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| Approaches: | Theoretical, Computational |
Abstract
Ever since Heisenberg's proposal of a quantum-mechanical origin of ferromagnetism in 1928, the spin model named after him has been central to advances in magnetism, featuring in proposals of novel many-body states such as antiferromagnets, emergent gauge fields in their confined (valence bond crystal) and deconfined (resonating valence bond spin liquids) versions. Between them, these cover much of our understanding of modern magnetism specifically and topological states of matter in general. Many exciting phenomena predicted theoretically still await experimental realisation, and cold atomic systems hold the promise of acting as analogue 'quantum simulators' of the relevant theoretical models, for which ingenious and intricate set-ups have been proposed. Here, we identify a new class of particularly simple quantum simulators exhibiting many such phenomena but obviating the need for fine-tuning and for amplifying perturbatively weak superexchange or longer-range interactions. Instead they require only moderate on-site interactions on top of uncorrelated, one-body hopping--ingredients already available with present experimental technology. Between them, they realise some of the most interesting phenomena, such as emergent synthetic gauge fields, resonating valence bond phases, and even the celebrated yet enigmatic spin liquid phase of the kagome lattice.
Current status:
Reports on this Submission
Strengths
1.- New setup for quantum the quantum simulation of interesting phases of matter, many of them hard to assess with current numerical methods.
2.- The setup is in principle possible with current technology
Weaknesses
1.- A more detailed explanation of the experimental details for the proposed optical-lattice setup would be desirable.
2.- More details on the numerical simulations supporting the main claims of the paper (namely, the mapping between Heisenberg and XY eigenstates) would also be desirable.
Report
In this paper the authors point out that many interesting regimes of the Heisenberg model in a variety of lattices can be reproduced by an XY model which, in turn, can be simulated with current technology by hopping bosons in optical lattices. This is a rather simple but somehow nontrivial and, because of some reason, overlooked observation. The authors support theor claims with several numerical simulations computing the spectrum of the Heisenberg and XY models in a variety of setups, showing the mapping between the low-energy sectors of these models. I think this is an interesting observation that has the potential to be useful in a near future, in the context of optical-lattce quantum simulators. Therefore I recommend the paper for publication in SciPost.
Requested changes
Before publication, I would like the authors to show more numerical results further supporting their claims, via exact diagonalization and/or other methods, as well as some more details on the proposed optical lattice setup. In this sense, perhaps a longer version of the paper, with a more detailed discussion, would be desirable.