Search

Abstract We consider the Brownian SYK, i.e. a system of N Majorana (Dirac) fermions with a white-noise q-body interaction term. We focus on the dynamics of the Frame potentials, a measure of the scrambling and chaos, given by the moments of the overlap between two independent realisations of the model. By means of a Keldysh path-integral formalism, we compute its early and late-time value. We show that, for q > 2, the late time path integral saddle point correctly reproduces the saturation to the value of the Haar frame potential. On the contrary, for q = 2, the model is quadratic and consistently we observe saturation to the Haar value in the restricted space of Gaussian states (Gaussian Haar). The latter is characterised by larger system size corrections that we correctly capture by counting the Goldstone modes of the Keldysh saddle point. Finally, in the case of Dirac fermions, we highlight and resolve the role of the global U(1) symmetry.

We study the time evolution of long quantum spin chains subjected to continuous monitoring projected on matrix product states (MPS) with fixed bond dimension, by means of the Time-Dependent Variational Principle (TDVP) algorithm. The latter gives an effective unitary evolution which approximates the real quantum evolution up to the projection error. We show that such error displays, at large times, a phase transition in the monitoring strength, which can be well detected by scaling analysis with relatively low values of bond dimensions. Moreover, in the presence of U(1) global spin charge, we show the existence of a charge-sharpening transition well separated from the entanglement transition which we detect by studying the charge fluctuations of a local subpart of the system at large times. Our work shows that quantum monitored dynamics projected on MPS manifolds contains relevant information on measurement-induced phase transitions and provides a new method to identify measured-induced phase transitions in systems of arbitrary dimensions and sizes.

Anomalous finite-temperature transport has recently been observed in numerical studies of various integrable models in one dimension; these models share the feature of being invariant under a continuous non-Abelian global symmetry. This work offers a comprehensive group-theoretic account of this elusive phenomenon. For an integrable quantum model with local interactions, invariant under a global non-Abelian simple Lie group G, we find that finite-temperature transport of Noether charges associated with symmetry G in thermal states that are invariant under G is universally superdiffusive and characterized by the dynamical exponent z=3/2. This conclusion holds regardless of the Lie algebra symmetry, local degrees of freedom (on-site representations), Lorentz invariance, or particular realization of microscopic interactions: We accordingly dub it “superuniversal.” The anomalous transport behavior is attributed to long-lived giant quasiparticles dressed by thermal fluctuations. We provide an algebraic viewpoint on the corresponding dressing transformation and elucidate formal connections to fusion identities amongst the quantum-group characters. We identify giant quasiparticles with nonlinear soliton modes of classical field theories that describe low-energy excitations above ferromagnetic vacua. Our analysis of these field theories also provides a complete classification of the low-energy (i.e., Goldstone-mode) spectra of quantum isotropic ferromagnetic chains.

We develop a method based on tensor networks to create localized single-particle excitations on top of strongly correlated quantum spin chains. In analogy to the problem of creating localized Wannier modes, this is achieved by optimizing the gauge freedom of momentum excitations on top of matrix product states. The corresponding wave packets propagate almost dispersionlessly. The time-dependent variational principle is used to scatter two such wave packets, and we extract the phase shift from the collision data. We also study reflection and transmission coefficients of a wave packet impinging on an impurity.

We extend beyond the Euler scales the hydrodynamic theory for quantum and classical integrable models developed in recent years, accounting for diffusive dynamics and local entropy production. We review how the diffusive scale can be reached via a gradient expansion of the expectation values of the conserved fields and how the coefficients of the expansion can be computed via integrated steady-state two-point correlation functions, emphasising that PT-symmetry can fully fix the inherent ambiguity in the definition of conserved fields at the diffusive scale. We develop a form factor expansion to compute such correlation functions and we show that, while the dynamics at the Euler scale is completely determined by the density of single quasiparticle excitations on top of the local steady state, diffusion is due to scattering processes among quasiparticles, which are only present in truly interacting systems. We then show that only two-quasiparticle scattering processes contribute to the diffusive dynamics. Finally we employ the theory to compute the exact spin diffusion constant of a gapped XXZ spin-1/2 chain at finite temperature and half-filling, where we show that spin transport is purely diffusive.

Quantum integrable models display a rich variety of non-thermal excited states with unusual properties. The most common way to probe them is by performing a quantum quench, i.e., by letting a many-body initial state unitarily evolve with an integrable Hamiltonian. At late times, these systems are locally described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble with as many effective temperatures as their local conserved quantities. The experimental measurement of this macroscopic number of temperatures remains elusive. Here we show that they can be obtained by probing the dynamical structure factor of the system after the quench and by employing a generalized fluctuation-dissipation theorem that we provide. Our procedure allows us to completely reconstruct the stationary state of a quantum integrable system from state-of-the-art experimental observations.

We study the density-density correlation function of the 1D Lieb-Liniger model and obtain an exact expression for the small momentum limit of the static correlator in the thermodynamic limit. We achieve this by summing exactly over the relevant form factors of the density operator in the small momentum limit. The result is valid for any eigenstate, including thermal and non-thermal states. We also show that the small momentum limit of the dynamic structure factors obeys a generalized detailed balance relation valid for any equilibrium state.

We introduce non-trivial contributions to diffusion constant in generic many-body systems arising from quadratic fluctuations of ballistically propagating, i.e. convective, modes. Our result is obtained by expanding the current operator in the vicinity of equilibrium states in terms of powers of local and quasi-local conserved quantities. We show that only the second-order terms in this expansion carry a finite contribution to diffusive spreading. Our formalism implies that whenever there are at least two coupled modes with degenerate group velocities, the system behaves super-diffusively, in accordance with the non-linear fluctuating hydrodynamics theory. Finally, we show that our expression saturates the exact diffusion constants in quantum and classical interacting integrable systems, providing a general framework to derive these expressions.

We study the open XXZ spin chain in the anti-ferromagnetic regime and for generic longitudinal magnetic fields at the two boundaries. We discuss the ground state via the Bethe ansatz and we show that, for a chain of even length L and in a regime where both boundary magnetic fields are equal and bounded by a critical field, the spectrum is gapped and the ground state is doubly degenerate up to exponentially small corrections in L. We connect this degeneracy to the presence of a boundary root, namely an excitation localized at one of the two boundaries. We compute the local magnetization at the left edge of the chain and we show that, due to the existence of a boundary root, this depends also on the value of the field at the opposite edge, even in the half-infinite chain limit. Moreover we give an exact expression for the large time limit of the spin autocorrelation at the boundary, which we explicitly compute in terms of the form factor between the two quasi-degenerate ground states. This, as we show, turns out to be equal to the contribution of the boundary root to the local magnetization. We finally discuss the case of chains of odd length.