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In 2018, Bourgain pioneered a novel perturbative harmonic-analytic approach to the stochastic homogenization theory of discrete elliptic equations with weakly random i.i.d. coefficients. The approach was subsequently refined to show that homogenized approximations of ensemble averages can be derived to a precision four times better than almost sure homogenized approximations, which was unexpected by the state-of-the-art homogenization theory. In this paper, we grow this budding theory in various directions: First, we prove that the approach is robust by extending it to the continuum setting with exponentially mixing random coefficients. Second, we give a new proof via Malliavin calculus in the case of Gaussian coefficients, which avoids the main technicality of Bourgain's original approach. This new proof also applies to strong Gaussian correlations with power-law decay. Third, we extend Bourgain's approach to the study of fluctuations by constructing weak correctors up to order $2d$, which also clarifies the link between Bourgain's approach and the standard corrector approach to homogenization. Finally, we draw several consequences from those different results, both for quantitative homogenization of ensemble averages and for asymptotic expansions of the annealed Green's function., Comment: 59 pages

Several recent works have considered Lieb-Robinson bounds (LRBs) for Bose-Hubbard-type Hamiltonians. For certain special classes of initial states (e.g., states with particle-free regions or perturbations of stationary states), the velocity of information propagation was bounded by a constant in time, $v\leq C$, similarly to quantum spin systems. However, for the more general class of bounded-density initial states, the first-named author together with Vu and Saito derived the velocity bound $v\leq C t^{D-1}$, where $D$ is the spatial lattice dimension. For $D\geq 2$, this bound allows for accelerated information propagation. It has been known since the work of Eisert and Gross that some systems of lattice bosons are capable of accelerated information propagation. It is therefore a central question to understand under what conditions the bound $v\leq C t^{D-1}$ can be enhanced. Here, we prove that additional physical constraints, translation-invariance and a $p$-body repulsion of the form $n_x^p$ with $p>D+1$, lead to a LRB with $v\leq C t^{\frac{D}{p-D-1}}$ for any initial state of bounded energy density. We also identify examples of quantum states which show that no further enhancement is possible without using additional dynamical constraints., Comment: 41 pages, 2 figures

Quantum many-body chaos concerns the scrambling of quantum information among large numbers of degrees of freedom. It rests on the prediction that out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) of the form $\langle [A(t),B]^2\rangle$ can be connected to classical symplectic dynamics. We rigorously prove a variant of this correspondence principle for mean-field bosons. We show that the $N\to\infty$ limit of the OTOC $\langle [A(t),B]^2\rangle$ is explicitly given by a suitable symplectic Bogoliubov dynamics. The proof uses Bogoliubov theory and extends to higher-order correlators of observables at different times. For these, it yields an out-of-time-ordered analog of the Wick rule. Our result spotlights a new problem in nonlinear dispersive PDE with implications for quantum many-body chaos., Comment: 30 pages

We consider the quantum dynamics of a many-fermion system in $\mathbb R^d$ with an ultraviolet regularized pair interaction as previously studied in [M. Gebert, B. Nachtergaele, J. Reschke, and R. Sims, Ann. Henri Poincar\'e 21.11 (2020)]. We provide a Lieb-Robinson bound under substantially relaxed assumptions on the potentials. We also improve the associated one-body Lieb-Robinson bound on $L^2$-overlaps to an almost ballistic one (i.e., an almost linear light cone) under the same relaxed assumptions. Applications include the existence of the infinite-volume dynamics and clustering of ground states in the presence of a spectral gap. We also develop a fermionic continuum notion of conditional expectation and use it to approximate time-evolved fermionic observables by local ones, which opens the door to other applications of the Lieb-Robinson bounds., Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures; v1->v2: added missing assumption in Corollaries 2.8 and 2.9

We consider the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation that is generated on the bosonic Fock space by a long-range quantum many-body Hamiltonian. We derive the first bound on the maximal speed of particle transport in these systems that is thermodynamically stable and holds all the way down to microscopic length scales. For this, we develop a novel multiscale rendition of the ASTLO (adiabatic spacetime localization observables) method. Our result opens the door to deriving the first thermodynamically stable Lieb-Robinson bounds on general local operators for these long-range interacting bosonic systems., Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures; v1->v2: relaxed decay assumption in main result

This manuscript puts forward and verifies an analytical approach to design phononic crystals that feature a bandgap at the lowest possible frequencies. This new approach is verified against numerical optimization. It rests on the exact form of the trace of the cumulative transfer matrix. This matrix arises from the product of N elementary transfer matrices, where N represents the number of layers in the unit cell of the crystal. The paper presents first a new proof of the harmonic decomposition of the trace (which, unlike the original derivation, does not resort to group-theoretical concepts), and then goes to demonstrate that the long-wavelength asymptotics of the function that governs the dispersion relation can be described in closed form for any layering, plus that it possesses a simple and explicit form that facilitates its study. Using this asymptotic result for low frequencies, we then propose an analytical curvature-minimization approach to devise layerings that yield an opening of the first frequency bandgap at the lowest possible frequency value. Finally, we also show that minimizing the frequency at which the first gap opens can be at odds with obtaining broadband attenuation, i.e., maximizing the width of the first frequency bandgap., Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables

We consider Markovian open quantum dynamics (MOQD). We show that, up to small-probability tails, the supports of quantum states evolving under such dynamics propagate with finite speed in any finite-energy subspace. More precisely, we prove that if the initial quantum state is localized in space, then any finite-energy part of the solution of the von Neumann-Lindblad equation is approximately localized inside an energy-dependent light cone. We also obtain an explicit upper bound for the slope of this light cone., Comment: 43 pages

We study general lattice bosons with long-range hopping and long-range interactions decaying as $|x-y|^{-\alpha} $ with $\alpha\in (d+2,2d+1)$. We find a linear light cone for the information propagation starting from suitable initial states. We apply these bounds to estimate the minimal time needed for quantum messaging, for the propagation of quantum correlations, and for quantum state control. The proofs are based on the ASTLO method (adiabatic spacetime localization observables). Our results pose previously unforeseen limitations on the applicability of fast-transfer and entanglement-generation protocols developed for breaking linear light cones in long-range and/or bosonic systems., Comment: 29 pages, 1 figure; see arXiv:2212.14472 for additional details

By explicit counterexample, we show that the "reflected entropy" defined by Dutta and Faulkner is not monotonically decreasing under partial trace, and so is not a measure of physical correlations. In fact, our counterexamples show that none of the R\'enyi reflected entropies $S_{R}^{(\alpha)}$ for $0 < \alpha < 2$ is a correlation measure; the usual reflected entropy is realized as the $\alpha=1$ member of this family. The counterexamples are given by quantum states that correspond to classical probability distributions, so reflected entropy fails to measure correlations even at the classical level., Comment: v1 is 4 pages long; v2 contains light edits to bring the preprint in line with the published version, and is 4.5 pages long

We prove a maximal velocity bound for the dynamics of Markovian open quantum systems. The dynamics are described by one-parameter semi-groups of quantum channels satisfying the von Neumann-Lindblad equation. Our result says that dynamically evolving states are contained inside a suitable light cone up to polynomial errors. We also give a bound on the slope of the light cone, i.e., the maximal propagation speed. The result implies an upper bound on the speed of propagation of local perturbations of stationary states in open quantum systems.

A physical system is said to satisfy a thermal area law if the mutual information between two adjacent regions in the Gibbs state is controlled by the area of their boundary. Thermal area laws have been derived for systems with bounded local interactions such as quantum spin systems. However, for lattice bosons these arguments break down because the interactions are unbounded. We rigorously derive a thermal area law for a class of bosonic Hamiltonians in any dimension which includes the paradigmatic Bose-Hubbard model. The main idea to go beyond bounded interactions is to introduce a quasi-free reference state with artificially decreased chemical potential by means of a double Peierls-Bogoliubov estimate., Comment: 14 pages; 1 figure; v1->v2: result extended, new title; v2->v3: result extended and minor corrections, published version

We prove a conjecture by Zhang, Ahmadain, and Klich that the spin-$1$ Motzkin chain is gapped for any area weight $t<1$. Existence of a finite spectral gap is necessary for the Motzkin Hamiltonian to belong to the Haldane phase, which has been argued to potentially be the case in recent work of Barbiero, Dell'Anna, Trombettoni, and Korepin. Our proof rests on the combinatorial structure of the ground space and the analytical verification of a finite-size criterion., Comment: 85 pages ; 13 figures

A well-known conjecture in mathematical physics asserts that the interacting Bose gas exhibits Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in the thermodynamic limit. We consider the Bose gas on certain hyperbolic spaces. In this setting, one obtains a short proof of BEC in the infinite-volume limit from the existence of a volume-independent spectral gap of the Laplacian., Comment: 27 pages, v1->v2: minor changes and added references

We consider dynamically defined Hermitian matrices generated from orbits of the doubling map. We prove that their spectra fall into the GUE universality class from random matrix theory., Comment: 31 pages; 1 figure

Finite-size criteria have emerged as an effective tool for deriving spectral gaps in higher-dimensional frustration-free quantum spin systems. We quantitatively improve the existing finite-size criteria by introducing a novel subsystem weighting scheme. The approach applies to Euclidean lattices of any dimension, the honeycomb lattice, and the triangular lattice., Comment: 22 pages; 4 tables; 7 figures

We consider random translation-invariant frustration-free quantum spin Hamiltonians on $\mathbb Z^D$ in which the nearest-neighbor interaction in every direction is randomly sampled and then distributed across the lattice. Our main result is that, under a small rank constraint, the Hamiltonians are automatically frustration-free and they are gapped with a positive probability. This extends previous results on 1D spin chains to all dimensions. The argument additionally controls the local gap. As an application, we obtain a 2D area law for a cut-dependent ground state via recent AGSP methods of Anshu-Arad-Gosset., Comment: 12 pages; 1 figure

The Lieb-Robinson bound asserts the existence of a maximal propagation speed for the quantum dynamics of lattice spin systems. Such general bounds are not available for most bosonic lattice gases due to their unbounded local interactions. Here we establish for the first time a general ballistic upper bound on macroscopic particle transport in the paradigmatic Bose-Hubbard model. The bound is the first to cover a broad class of initial states with positive density including Mott states, which resolves a longstanding open problem. It applies to Bose-Hubbard type models on any lattice with not too long-ranged hopping. The proof is rigorous and rests on controlling the time evolution of a new kind of adiabatic spacetime localization observable via iterative differential inequalities., Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures

We consider the dynamics of the Bose-Hubbard model on general lattices and prove a Lieb-Robinson bound for observables whose supports are separated by an initially almost particle-free region. We further obtain a maximal velocity bound for particle transport through an initially empty region which also applies to long-range hopping. Our techniques originate in the proofs of maximal velocity bounds for Schr\"odinger operators and scattering theory in non-relativistic QED., Comment: 29 pages, to appear in CMP

We consider random elliptic equations in dimension $d\geq 3$ at small ellipticity contrast. We derive the large-distance asymptotic expansion of the annealed Green's function up to order $4$ in $d=3$ and up to order $d+2$ for $d\geq 4$. We also derive asymptotic expansions of its derivatives. The obtained precision lies far beyond what is established in prior results in stochastic homogenization theory. Our proof builds on a recent breakthrough in perturbative stochastic homogenization by Bourgain in a refined version shown by Kim and the second author, and on Fourier-analytic techniques of Uchiyama., Comment: 15 pages. This article has been split off from arXiv:2103.17019 [math.AP] by the same authors

We investigate the large-distance asymptotics of optimal Hardy weights on $\mathbb Z^d$, $d\geq 3$, via the super solution construction. For the free discrete Laplacian, the Hardy weight asymptotic is the familiar $\frac{(d-2)^2}{4}|x|^{-2}$ as $|x|\to\infty$. We prove that the inverse-square behavior of the optimal Hardy weight is robust for general elliptic coefficients on $\mathbb Z^d$: (1) averages over large sectors have inverse-square scaling, (2), for ergodic coefficients, there is a pointwise inverse-square upper bound on moments, and (3), for i.i.d.\ coefficients, there is a matching inverse-square lower bound on moments. The results imply $|x|^{-4}$-scaling for Rellich weights on $\mathbb Z^d$. Analogous results are also new in the continuum setting. The proofs leverage Green's function estimates rooted in homogenization theory., Comment: 28 pages. v2: result on asymptotic expansion of annealed Green's function has been split off as arXiv:2107.11583 [math.AP]

We introduce the $N\times N$ random matrices $$ X_{j,k}=\exp\left(2\pi i \sum_{q=1}^d\ \omega_{j,q} k^q\right) \quad \text{with } \{\omega_{j,q}\}_{\substack{1\leq j\leq N\\ 1\leq q\leq d}} \text{ i.i.d. random variables}, $$ and $d$ a fixed integer. We prove that the distribution of their singular values converges to the local Marchenko-Pastur law at scales $N^{-\theta_d}$ for an explicit, small $\theta_d>0$, as long as $d\geq 18$. To our knowledge, this is the first instance of a random matrix ensemble that is explicitly defined in terms of only $O(N)$ random variables exhibiting a universal local spectral law. Our main technical contribution is to derive concentration bounds for the Stieltjes transform that simultaneously take into account stochastic and oscillatory cancellations. Important ingredients in our proof are strong estimates on the number of solutions to Diophantine equations (in the form of Vinogradov's main conjecture recently proved by Bourgain-Demeter-Guth) and a pigeonhole argument that combines the Ward identity with an algebraic uniqueness condition for Diophantine equations derived from the Newton-Girard identities., Comment: 30 pages

The Lyapunov exponent characterizes the asymptotic behavior of long matrix products. Recognizing scenarios where the Lyapunov exponent is strictly positive is a fundamental challenge that is relevant in many applications. In this work we establish a novel tool for this task by deriving a quantitative lower bound on the Lyapunov exponent in terms of a matrix sum which is efficiently computable in ergodic situations. Our approach combines two deep results from matrix analysis --- the $n$-matrix extension of the Golden-Thompson inequality and the Avalanche-Principle. We apply these bounds to the Lyapunov exponents of Schr\"odinger cocycles with certain ergodic potentials of polymer type and arbitrary correlation structure. We also derive related quantitative stability results for the Lyapunov exponent near aligned diagonal matrices and a bound for almost-commuting matrices., Comment: 46 pages; comments welcome

The $S=1$ Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) quantum spin chain was the first rigorous example of an isotropic spin system in the Haldane phase. The conjecture that the $S=3/2$ AKLT model on the hexagonal lattice is also in a gapped phase has remained open, despite being a fundamental problem of ongoing relevance to condensed-matter physics and quantum information theory. Here we confirm this conjecture by demonstrating the size-independent lower bound $\Delta >0.006$ on the spectral gap of the hexagonal model with periodic boundary conditions in the thermodynamic limit. Our approach consists of two steps combining mathematical physics and high-precision computational physics. We first prove a mathematical finite-size criterion which gives an analytical, size-independent bound on the spectral gap if the gap of a particular cut-out subsystem of 36 spins exceeds a certain threshold value. Then we verify the finite-size criterion numerically by performing state-of-the-art DMRG calculations on the subsystem., Comment: 12 pages; 11 figures; final version

It is known that a one-dimensional quantum particle is localized when subjected to an arbitrarily weak random potential. It is conjectured that localization also occurs for an arbitrarily weak potential generated from the nonlinear skew-shift dynamics: $v_n=2\cos\left(\binom{n}{2}\omega +ny+x\right)$ with $\omega$ an irrational number. Recently, Han, Schlag, and the second author derived a finite-size criterion in the case when $\omega$ is the golden mean, which allows to derive the positivity of the infinite-volume Lyapunov exponent from three conditions imposed at a fixed, finite scale. Here we numerically verify the two conditions among these that are amenable to computer calculations., Comment: 10 pages; 3 figures

In 1987, Affleck, Kennedy, Lieb, and Tasaki introduced the AKLT spin chain and proved that it has a spectral gap above the ground state. Their concurrent conjecture that the two-dimensional AKLT model on the hexagonal lattice is also gapped remains open. In this paper, we show that the AKLT Hamiltonian restricted to an arbitrarily long chain of hexagons is gapped. The argument is based on explicitly verifying a finite-size criterion which is tailor-made for the system at hand. We also discuss generalizations of the method to the full hexagonal lattice., Comment: 17 pages; 4 figures; 2 tables -- comments welcome

We consider large Hermitian matrices whose entries are defined by evaluating the exponential function along orbits of the skew-shift $\binom{j}{2} \omega+jy+x \mod 1$ for irrational $\omega$. We prove that the eigenvalue distribution of these matrices converges to the corresponding distribution from random matrix theory on the global scale, namely, the Wigner semicircle law for square matrices and the Marchenko-Pastur law for rectangular matrices. The results evidence the quasi-random nature of the skew-shift dynamics which was observed in other contexts by Bourgain-Goldstein-Schlag and Rudnick-Sarnak-Zaharescu., Comment: 46 pages; 11 figures; 1 table

We derive a central limit theorem for the mean-square of random waves in the high-frequency limit over shrinking sets. Our proof applies to any compact Riemannian manifold of arbitrary dimension, thanks to the universality of the local Weyl law. The key technical step is an estimate capturing some cancellation in a triple integral of Bessel functions, which we achieve using Gegenbauer's addition formula., Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures

In a recent work, Bourgain gave a fine description of the expectation of solutions of discrete linear elliptic equations on $\mathbb Z^d$ with random coefficients in a perturbative regime using tools from harmonic analysis. This result is surprising for it goes beyond the expected accuracy suggested by recent results in quantitative stochastic homogenization. In this short article we reformulate Bourgain's result in a form that highlights its interest to the state-of-the-art in homogenization (and especially the theory of fluctuations), and we state several related conjectures., Comment: 12 pages

The existence of a spectral gap above the ground state has far-reaching consequences for the low-energy physics of a quantum many-body system. A recent work of Movassagh [R. Movassagh, PRL 119 (2017), 220504] shows that a spatially random local quantum Hamiltonian is generically gapless. Here we observe that a gap is more common for translation-invariant quantum spin chains, more specifically, that these are gapped with a positive probability if the interaction is of small rank. This is in line with a previous analysis of the spin-$1/2$ case by Bravyi and Gosset. The Hamiltonians are constructed by selecting a single projection of sufficiently small rank at random, and then translating it across the entire chain. By the rank assumption, the resulting Hamiltonians are automatically frustration-free and this fact plays a key role in our analysis., Comment: 17 pages; minor changes; comments welcome

Product vacua with boundary states (PVBS) are cousins of the Heisenberg XXZ spin model and feature $n$ particle species on $\mathbb Z^d$. The PVBS models were originally introduced as toy models for the classification of ground state phases. A crucial ingredient for this classification is the existence of a spectral gap above the ground state sector. In this work, we derive a spectral gap for PVBS models at arbitrary species number $n$ and in arbitrary dimension $d$ in the perturbative regime of small anisotropy parameters. Instead of using the more common martingale method, the proof verifies a finite-size criterion in the spirit of Knabe., Comment: 22 pages; revised version to appear in Rev. Math. Phys

We generalize the existing finite-size criteria for spectral gaps of frustration-free spin systems to $D>2$ dimensions. We obtain a local gap threshold of $\frac{3}{n}$, independent of $D$, for nearest-neighbor interactions. The $\frac{1}{n}$ scaling persists for arbitrary finite-range interactions in $\mathbb Z^3$. The key observation is that there is more flexibility in Knabe's combinatorial approach if one employs the operator Cauchy-Schwarz inequality., Comment: 16 pages

The AKLT spin chain is the prototypical example of a frustration-free quantum spin system with a spectral gap above its ground state. Affleck, Kennedy, Lieb, and Tasaki also conjectured that the two-dimensional version of their model on the hexagonal lattice exhibits a spectral gap. In this paper, we introduce a family of variants of the two-dimensional AKLT model depending on a positive integer $n$, which is defined by decorating the edges of the hexagonal lattice with one-dimensional AKLT spin chains of length $n$. We prove that these decorated models are gapped for all $n \geq 3$., Comment: various corrections, version accepted for publication in Contemporary Mathematics (AMS)

We study the one-dimensional discrete Schr\"odinger operator with the skew-shift potential $2\lambda\cos\left(2\pi \left(\binom{j}{2} \omega+jy+x\right)\right)$. This potential is long conjectured to behave like a random one, i.e., it is expected to produce Anderson localization for arbitrarily small coupling constants $\lambda>0$. In this paper, we introduce a novel perturbative approach for studying the zero-energy Lyapunov exponent $L(\lambda)$ at small $\lambda$. Our main results establish that, to second order in perturbation theory, a natural upper bound on $L(\lambda)$ is fully consistent with $L(\lambda)$ being positive and satisfying the usual Figotin-Pastur type asymptotics $L(\lambda)\sim C\lambda^2$ as $\lambda\to 0$. The analogous quantity behaves completely differently in the Almost-Mathieu model, whose zero-energy Lyapunov exponent vanishes for $\lambda<1$. The main technical work consists in establishing good lower bounds on the exponential sums (quadratic Weyl sums) that appear in our perturbation series., Comment: 33 pages

We consider a divergence-form elliptic difference operator on the lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$, with a coefficient matrix that is an i.i.d. perturbation of the identity matrix. Recently, Bourgain introduced novel techniques from harmonic analysis to prove the convergence of the Feshbach-Schur perturbation series related to the averaged Green's function of this model. Our main contribution is a refinement of Bourgain's approach which improves the key decay rate from $-2d+\epsilon$ to $-3d+\epsilon$. (The optimal decay rate is conjectured to be $-3d$.) As an application, we derive estimates on higher derivatives of the averaged Green's function which go beyond the second derivatives considered by Delmotte-Deuschel and related works., Comment: 47 pages

We prove a conditional theorem on the positivity of the Lyapunov exponent for a Schr\"odinger cocycle over a skew shift base with a cosine potential and the golden ratio as frequency. For coupling below 1, which is the threshold for Herman's subharmonicity trick, we formulate three conditions on the Lyapunov exponent in a finite but large volume and on the associated large deviation estimates at that scale. Our main results demonstrate that these finite-size conditions imply the positivity of the infinite volume Lyapunov exponent. This paper shows that it is possible to make the techniques developed for the study of Schr\"odinger operators with deterministic potentials, based on large deviation estimates and the avalanche principle, effective.

In quantum many-body systems, the existence of a spectral gap above the ground state has far-reaching consequences. In this paper, we discuss "finite-size" criteria for having a spectral gap in frustration-free spin systems and their applications. We extend a criterion that was originally developed for periodic systems by Knabe and Gosset-Mozgunov to systems with a boundary. Our finite-size criterion says that if the spectral gaps at linear system size $n$ exceed an explicit threshold of order $n^{-3/2}$, then the whole system is gapped. The criterion takes into account both "bulk gaps" and "edge gaps" of the finite system in a precise way. The $n^{-3/2}$ scaling is robust: it holds in 1D and 2D systems, on arbitrary lattices and with arbitrary finite-range interactions. One application of our results is to give a rigorous foundation to the folklore that 2D frustration-free models cannot host chiral edge modes (whose finite-size spectral gap would scale like $n^{-1}$)., Comment: 51 pages; 4 figures; revised version to appear in J. Math. Phys

In 1988, Knabe found a "finite-size criterion" to determine whether a frustration-free quantum spin chain with periodic boundary conditions is uniformly gapped in the thermodynamic limit. The criterion provides a threshold for the spectral gap at a finite system size such that, if the threshold is exceeded for a fixed system size, then the chain with periodic boundary conditions is uniformly gapped. We extend Knabe's result to frustration-free spin chains equipped with open boundary conditions. We now obtain two finite-size criteria: The first one is identical to Knabe's criterion and we interpret it as a bulk criterion. The second one controls the spectral gaps at smaller system sizes and can be interpreted as a new edge criterion. Heuristically, it excludes the presence of thermodynamically gapless excitations living near the edge., Comment: This paper is superseded by arXiv:1801.08915

We consider a family of multivariate trace inequalities recently derived by Sutter, Berta and Tomamichel. These inequalities generalize the Golden-Thompson inequality and Lieb's three-matrix inequality to an arbitrary number of matrices in a way that features complex matrix powers. We show that their inequalities can be rewritten as an $n$-matrix generalization of Lieb's original three-matrix inequality. The complex matrix powers are replaced by resolvents and appropriate maximally entangled states. We expect that the technically advantageous properties of resolvents, in particular for perturbation theory, can be of use in applications of the $n$-matrix inequalities, e.g., for analyzing the rotated Petz recovery map in quantum information theory., Comment: 14 pages; comments welcome

The antisymmetry of a fermionic quantum state has a marked effect on its entanglement properties. Recently, Carlen, Lieb and Reuvers (CLR) studied this effect, in particular concerning the entropy of the two-body reduced density matrix of a fermionic state. They conjecture that this entropy is minimized by Slater determinants. We use tools from quantum information theory to make progress on their conjecture, proving it when the dimension of the underlying Hilbert space is not too large. We also derive general properties of the entropy of the $k$-body reduced density matrix as a function of $k$: It is concave for all $k$ and non-decreasing for all $k\leq N/2$, where $N$ is the number of fermionic particles. We can apply these general facts to improve the bound of CLR in all dimensions., Comment: 9 pages

Nematic elastomers and glasses deform spontaneously when subjected to temperature changes. This property can be exploited in the design of heterogeneously patterned thin sheets that deform into a non-trivial shape when heated or cooled. In this paper, we start from a variational formulation for the entropic elastic energy of liquid crystal elastomers and we derive an effective two-dimensional metric constraint, which links the deformation and the heterogeneous director field. Our main results show that satisfying the metric constraint is both necessary and sufficient for the deformation to be an approximate minimizer of the energy. We include several examples which show that the class of deformations satisfying the metric constraint is quite rich., Comment: 54 pages

We prove new quantitative limitations on any approximate simultaneous cloning or broadcasting of mixed states. The results are based on information-theoretic (entropic) considerations and generalize the well known no-cloning and no-broadcasting theorems. We also observe and exploit the fact that the universal cloning machine on the symmetric subspace of $n$ qudits and symmetrized partial trace channels are dual to each other. This duality manifests itself both in the algebraic sense of adjointness of quantum channels and in the operational sense that a universal cloning machine can be used as an approximate recovery channel for a symmetrized partial trace channel and vice versa. The duality extends to give control on the performance of generalized UQCMs on subspaces more general than the symmetric subspace. This gives a way to quantify the usefulness of a-priori information in the context of cloning. For example, we can control the performance of an antisymmetric analogue of the UQCM in recovering from the loss of $n-k$ fermionic particles., Comment: 13 pages; new results on approximate cloning between general subspaces, e.g., cloning of fermions

We consider a gas of fermions at zero temperature and low density, interacting via a microscopic two body potential which admits a bound state. The particles are confined to a domain with Dirichlet (i.e. zero) boundary conditions. Starting from the microscopic BCS theory, we derive an effective macroscopic Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) theory describing the condensate of fermion pairs. The GP theory also has Dirichlet boundary conditions. Along the way, we prove that the GP energy, defined with Dirichlet boundary conditions on a bounded Lipschitz domain, is continuous under interior and exterior approximations of that domain., Comment: 43 pages, 1 figure