No Arabic abstract
Considering nonintegrable quantum Ising chains with exponentially decaying interactions, we present matrix product state results that establish a connection between low-energy quasiparticle excitations and the kind of nonanalyticities in the Loschmidt return rate. When domain walls in the spectrum of the quench Hamiltonian are energetically favored to be bound rather than freely propagating, anomalous cusps appear in the return rate regardless of the initial state. In the nearest-neighbor limit, domain walls are always freely propagating, and anomalous cusps never appear. As a consequence, our work illustrates that models in the same equilibrium universality class can still exhibit fundamentally distinct out-of-equilibrium criticality. Our results are accessible to current ultracold-atom and ion-trap experiments.
We study the dynamics arising from a double quantum quench where the parameters of a given Hamiltonian are abruptly changed from being in an equilibrium phase A to a different phase B and back (A$to$B$to$A). As prototype models, we consider the (integrable) transverse field Ising as well as the (non-integrable) ANNNI model. The return amplitude features non-analyticities after the first quench through the equilibrium quantum critical point (A$to$B), which is routinely taken as a signature of passing through a so-called dynamical quantum phase transition. We demonstrate that non-analyticities after the second quench (B$to$A) can be avoided and reestablished in a recurring manner upon increasing the time $T$ spent in phase B. The system retains an infinite memory of its past state, and one has the intriguing opportunity to control at will whether or not dynamical quantum phase transitions appear after the second quench.
We study high frequency response functions, notably the optical conductivity, in the vicinity of quantum critical points (QCPs) by allowing for both detuning from the critical coupling and finite temperature. We consider general dimensions and dynamical exponents. This leads to a unified understanding of sum rules. In systems with emergent Lorentz invariance, powerful methods from conformal field theory allow us to fix the high frequency response in terms of universal coefficients. We test our predictions analytically in the large-N O(N) model and using the gauge-gravity duality, and numerically via Quantum Monte Carlo simulations on a lattice model hosting the interacting superfluid-insulator QCP. In superfluid phases, interacting Goldstone bosons qualitatively change the high frequency optical conductivity, and the corresponding sum rule.
Dynamical phase transitions extend the notion of criticality to non-stationary settings and are characterized by sudden changes in the macroscopic properties of time-evolving quantum systems. Investigations of dynamical phase transitions combine aspects of symmetry, topology, and non-equilibrium physics, however, progress has been hindered by the notorious difficulties of predicting the time evolution of large, interacting quantum systems. Here, we tackle this outstanding problem by determining the critical times of interacting many-body systems after a quench using Loschmidt cumulants. Specifically, we investigate dynamical topological phase transitions in the interacting Kitaev chain and in the spin-1 Heisenberg chain. To this end, we map out the thermodynamic lines of complex times, where the Loschmidt amplitude vanishes, and identify the intersections with the imaginary axis, which yield the real critical times after a quench. For the Kitaev chain, we can accurately predict how the critical behavior is affected by strong interactions, which gradually shift the time at which a dynamical phase transition occurs. Our work demonstrates that Loschmidt cumulants are a powerful tool to unravel the far-from-equilibrium dynamics of strongly correlated many-body systems, and our approach can immediately be applied in higher dimensions.
Recent experiments on a one-dimensional chain of trapped alkali atoms [arXiv:1707.04344] have observed a quantum transition associated with the onset of period-3 ordering of pumped Rydberg states. This spontaneous $mathbb{Z}_3$ symmetry breaking is described by a constrained model of hard-core bosons proposed by Fendley $et, ,al.$ [arXiv:cond-mat/0309438]. By symmetry arguments, the transition is expected to be in the universality class of the $mathbb{Z}_3$ chiral clock model with parameters preserving both time-reversal and spatial-inversion symmetries. We study the nature of the order-disorder transition in these models, and numerically calculate its critical exponents with exact diagonalization and density-matrix renormalization group techniques. We use finite-size scaling to determine the dynamical critical exponent $z$ and the correlation length exponent $ u$. Our analysis presents the only known instance of a strongly-coupled transition between gapped states with $z e 1$, implying an underlying nonconformal critical field theory.
The quantum Kibble-Zurek mechanism (QKZM) predicts universal dynamical behavior in the vicinity of quantum phase transitions (QPTs). It is now well understood for one-dimensional quantum matter. Higher-dimensional systems, however, remain a challenge, complicated by fundamental differences of the associated QPTs and their underlying conformal field theories. In this work, we take the first steps towards exploring the QKZM in two dimensions. We study the dynamical crossing of the QPT in the paradigmatic Ising model by a joint effort of modern state-of-the-art numerical methods. As a central result, we quantify universal QKZM behavior close to the QPT. However, upon traversing further into the ferromagnetic regime, we observe deviations from the QKZM prediction. We explain the observed behavior by proposing an {it extended QKZM} taking into account spectral information as well as phase ordering. Our work provides a starting point towards the exploration of dynamical universality in higher-dimensional quantum matter.