The Kibble-Zurek (KZ) mechanism describes the generations of topological defects when a system undergoes a second-order phase transition via quenches. We study the holographic KZ scaling using holographic superconductors. The scaling can be understood analytically from a scaling analysis of the bulk action. The argument is reminiscent of the scaling analysis of the mean-field theory but is more subtle and is not entirely obvious. This is because the scaling is not the one of the original bulk theory but is an emergent one that appears only at the critical point. The analysis is also useful to determine the dynamic critical exponent $z$.
We study the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in a 2d holographic p-wave superconductor model with a homogeneous source quench on the critical point. We derive, on general grounds, the scaling of the Kibble-Zurek time, which marks breaking-down of adiabaticity. It is expressed in terms of four critical exponents, including three static and one dynamical exponents. Via explicit calculations within a holographic model, we confirm the scaling of the Kibble-Zurek time and obtain the scaling functions in the quench process. We find the results are formally similar to a homogeneous quench in a higher dimensional holographic s-wave superconductor. The similarity is due to the special type of quench we take. We expect differences in the quench dynamics if the condition of homogeneous source and dominance of critical mode are relaxed.
We investigate the quench dynamics of an open quantum system involving a quantum phase transition. In the isolated case, the quench dynamics involving the phase transition exhibits a number of scaling relations with the quench rate as predicted by the celebrated Kibble-Zurek mechanism. In contact with an environment however, these scaling laws breakdown and one may observe an anti-Kibble-Zurek behavior: slower ramps lead to less adiabatic dynamics, increasing thus non-adiabatic effects with the quench time. In contrast to previous works, we show here that such anti-Kibble-Zurek scaling can acquire a universal form in the sense that it is determined by the equilibrium critical exponents of the phase transition, provided the excited states of the system exhibit singular behavior, as observed in fully-connected models. This demonstrates novel universal scaling laws granted by a system-environment interaction in a critical system. We illustrate these findings in two fully-connected models, namely, the quantum Rabi and the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick models. In addition, we discuss the impact of non-linear ramps and finite-size systems.
Geometric quantum speed limits quantify the trade-off between the rate with which quantum states can change and the resources that are expended during the evolution. Counterdiabatic driving is a unique tool from shortcuts to adiabaticity to speed up quantum dynamics while completely suppressing nonequilibrium excitations. We show that the quantum speed limit for counterdiabatically driven systems undergoing quantum phase transitions fully encodes the Kibble-Zurek mechanism by correctly predicting the transition from adiabatic to impulse regimes. Our findings are demonstrated for three scenarios, namely the transverse field Ising, the Landau-Zener, and the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick models.
We investigate an extension of the quantum Ising model in one spatial dimension including long-range $1 / r^{alpha}$ interactions in its statics and dynamics with possible applications from heteronuclear polar molecules in optical lattices to trapped ions described by two-state spin systems. We introduce the statics of the system via both numerical techniques with finite size and infinite size matrix product states and a theoretical approaches using a truncated Jordan-Wigner transformation for the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic case and show that finite size effects have a crucial role shifting the quantum critical point of the external field by fifteen percent between thirty-two and around five-hundred spins. We numerically study the Kibble-Zurek hypothesis in the long-range quantum Ising model with Matrix Product States. A linear quench of the external field through the quantum critical point yields a power-law scaling of the defect density as a function of the total quench time. For example, the increase of the defect density is slower for longer-range models and the critical exponent changes by twenty-five per cent. Our study emphasizes the importance of such long-range interactions in statics and dynamics that could point to similar phenomena in a different setup of dynamical systems or for other models.
Clarifying conditions for the existence of a gravitational picture for a given quantum field theory (QFT) is one of the fundamental problems in the AdS/CFT correspondence. We propose a direct way to demonstrate the existence of the dual black holes: imaging an Einstein ring. We consider a response function of the thermal QFT on a two-dimensional sphere under a time-periodic localized source. The dual gravity picture, if it exists, is a black hole in an asymptotic global AdS$_4$ and a bulk probe field with a localized source on the AdS boundary. The response function corresponds to the asymptotic data of the bulk field propagating in the black hole spacetime. We find a formula that converts the response function to the image of the dual black hole: The view of the sky of the AdS bulk from a point on the boundary. Using the formula, we demonstrate that, for a thermal state dual to the Schwarzschild-AdS$_4$ spacetime, the Einstein ring is constructed from the response function. The evaluated Einstein radius is found to be determined by the total energy of the dual QFT. Our theoretical proposal opens a door to gravitational phenomena on strongly correlated materials.