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Understanding the origin(s) of life (OoL) is a fundamental challenge for science in the 21st century. Research on OoL spans many disciplines, including chemistry, physics, biology, planetary sciences, computer science, mathematics and philosophy. The sheer number of different scientific perspectives relevant to the problem has resulted in the coexistence of diverse tools, techniques, data, and software in OoL studies. This has made communication between the disciplines relevant to the OoL extremely difficult because the interpretation of data, analyses, or standards of evidence can vary dramatically. Here, we hope to bridge this wide field of study by providing common ground via the consolidation of tools and techniques rather than positing a unifying view on how life emerges. We review the common tools and techniques that have been used significantly in OoL studies in recent years. In particular, we aim to identify which information is most relevant for comparing and integrating the results of experimental analyses into mathematical and computational models. This review aims to provide a baseline expectation and understanding of technical aspects of origins research, rather than being a primer on any particular topic. As such, it spans broadly -- from analytical chemistry to mathematical models -- and highlights areas of future work that will benefit from a multidisciplinary approach to tackling the mystery of life's origin. Ultimately, we hope to empower a new generation of OoL scientists by reviewing how they can investigate life's origin, rather than dictating how to think about the problem.

In this work, we investigate quenches in a free-fermion chain with long-range hopping which decay with the distance with an exponent $\nu$ and has range $D$. By exploring the exact solution of the model, we found that the dynamic free energy is non-analytical, in the thermodynamic limit, whenever the sudden quench crosses the equilibrium quantum critical point. We were able to determine the non-analyticities of dynamic free energy $f(t)$ at some critical times $t^{c}$ by solving nonlinear equations. We also show that the Yang-Lee-Fisher (YLF) zeros cross the real-time axis at those critical times. We found that the number of nontrivial critical times, $N_{s},$ depends on $\nu$ and $D$. In particular, we show that for small $\nu$ and large $D$ the dynamic free energy presents non-analyticities in any time interval $\Delta t\sim1/D\ll1$, i.e., there are \emph{non-analyticities at almost all times}. For the spacial case $\nu=0$, we obtain the critical times in terms of a simple expression of the model parameters and also show that $f(t)$ is non-analytical even for finite system under anti-periodic boundary condition, when we consider some special values of quench parameters. We also show that, generically, the first derivative of the dynamic free energy is discontinuous at the critical time instant when the YLF zeros are non-degenerate. On the other hand, when they become degenerate, all derivatives of $f(t)$ exist at the associated critical instant., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, final version

We demonstrate that in a class of disordered quantum systems the dynamical partition function is not an analytical function in a time window after certain quantum quenches. We related this behavior to rare and large regions with atypical inhomogeneity configurations. We also quantify the strength of the associated singularities and their signatures in experiments and numerical studies., Comment: (v1): 6+6 pages, 4+2 figures, numerics on the dimerized XX spin-1/2 chain; (v2): 5+10 pages, 3+4 figures, numerics on the transverse-field Ising chain, published version

The spin-1/2 transverse field two-leg Ising ladder with nearest-neighbor exchange and plaquette four-spin interaction $J_{4}$ is studied analytically and numerically with the density matrix renormalization group approach. The quantum phase diagram in the transverse field $B$ versus $J_{4}$ plane has been obtained. There are three different phases: a paramagnetic (PM) phase for high values of the transverse field and, for low values of $B$, a ferromagnetic (FM) ordered phase for small $J_{4}$ and a dimerized-rung (DR) phase for large negative values of $J_{4}$. All phases are separated by quantum phase transition lines meeting at a multicritical point. The critical lines have been obtained by exploring the entanglement entropy. The results show that along the critical lines the central charge is $c=1/2$, while at the multicritical point one has $c=1$. The scaling dimension of the energy operator is $X_{\epsilon}=1$, in agreement with the universality class of the critical behavior of the quantum Ising chain. An effective field theory for the multicritical point is also discussed. The FM and the DR order parameters have also been computed and we found a region where the FM and the DR phases coexist., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables

In this paper, we present a physical modeling activity whose objective is to allow students to determine the differences between a disk and a sphere using pure scientific criteria. Thereunto, we reproduce the Sun-Earth-Moon system with low-cost materials and compare the illumination effects on the Moon considering two possible shapes for it (a sphere and a disk). The analysis is based on the shape of the Terminator line produced in each case as a function of the illumination angle. The results obtained are first discussed and then applied so that one can interpret the observed patterns in the illumination effects of other celestial bodies, such as Venus or even the Earth. Thereby, the activity can be very useful to unmask the unscientific idea of Flat Earth. The entire activity is easily replicable and it may be useful to promote a more realistic view of science and its methods.

Weakly coupled Ising chains provide a condensed-matter realization of confinement. In these systems, kinks and antikinks bind into mesons due to an attractive interaction potential that increases linearly with the distance between the particles. While single mesons have been directly observed in experiments, the role of the multiparticle continuum and bound states of mesons in the excitation spectrum is far less clear. Using time-dependent density matrix renormalization group methods, we study the dynamical structure factors of one- and two-spin operators in a transverse-field two-leg Ising ladder in the ferromagnetic phase. The propagation of time-dependent correlations and the two-spin excitation spectrum reveal the existence of interchain bound states, which are absent in the one-spin dynamical structure factor. We also identify two-meson bound states that appear at higher energies, above the thresholds of several two-meson continua., Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures

We calculate the entanglement and the universal boundary entropy (BE) in the critical quantum spin chains, such as the transverse field Ising chain and the XXZ chain, with arbitrary direction of the boundary magnetic field (ADBMF). We determine the boundary universality class that an ADBMF induces. In particular, we show that the induced boundary conformal field theory (BCFT) depends on the point on the Bloch sphere where the boundary magnetic field directs. We show that the classification of the directions boils down to the simple fact that the boundary field breaks the bulk symmetry or does not. We present a procedure to estimate the universal BE, based on the finite-size corrections of the entanglement entropy, that apply to the ADBMF. To calculate the universal BE in the XXZ chain, we use the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). The transverse field XY chain with ADBMF after Jordan-Wigner (JW) transformation is not a quadratic free fermion Hamiltonian. We map this model to a quadratic free fermion chain by introducing two extra ancillary spins coupled to the main chain at the boundaries, which makes the problem {\it{integrable}}. The eigenstates of the transverse field XY chain can be obtained by proper projection in the enlarged chain. Using this mapping, we are able to calculate the entanglement entropy of the transverse field XY chain using the usual correlation matrix technique up to relatively large sizes., Comment: 14 pages 3 figures v3: published version

We propose a simple modification of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method in order to tackle strongly disordered quantum spin chains. Our proposal, akin to the idea of the adaptive time-dependent DMRG, enables us to reach larger system sizes in the strong disorder limit by avoiding most of the metastable configurations which hinder the performance of the standard DMRG method. We benchmark our adaptive method by revisiting the random antiferromagnetic XXZ spin-1/2 chain for which we compute the random-singlet ground-state average spin-spin correlation functions and von Neumann entanglement entropy. We then apply our method to the bilinear-biquadratic random antiferromagnetic spin-1 chain tuned to the antiferromagnet and gapless highly symmetric SU(3) point. We find the new result that the mean correlation function decays algebraically with the same universal exponent $\phi=2$ as the spin-1/2 chain. We then perform numerical and analytical strong-disorder renormalization-group calculations which confirm this finding and generalize it for any highly symmetric SU($N$) random-singlet state., Comment: 9 pages,8 figures, final version to appear in PRB