No Arabic abstract
A local excitation in a quantum many-spin system evolves deterministically. A time-reversal procedure, involving the inversion of the signs of every energy and interaction, should produce the excitation revival. This idea, experimentally coined in NMR, embodies the concept of the Loschmidt echo (LE). While such an implementation involves a single spin autocorrelation $M_{1,1}$, i.e. a local LE, theoretical efforts have focused on the study of the recovery probability of a complete many-body state, referred here as global or many-body LE $M_{MB}$. Here, we analyze the relation between these magnitudes, in what concerns to their characteristic time scales and their dependence on the number of spins $N$. We show that the global LE can be understood, to some extent, as the simultaneous occurrence of $N$ independent local LEs, i.e. $M_{MB}sim left( M_{1,1}right) ^{N/4}$. This extensive hypothesis is exact for very short times and confirmed numerically beyond such a regime. Furthermore, we discuss a general picture of the decay of $M_{1,1}$ as a consequence of the interplay between the time scale that characterizes the reversible interactions ($T_{2}$) and that of the perturbation ($tau _{Sigma }$). Our analysis suggests that the short time decay, characterized by the time scale $tau _{Sigma }$, is greatly enhanced by the complex processes that occur beyond $T_{2}$ . This would ultimately lead to the experimentally observed $T_{3},$ which was found to be roughly independent of $tau _{Sigma }$ but closely tied to $T_{2}$.
If a magnetic polarization excess is locally injected in a crystal of interacting spins, this excitation would spread as consequence of spin-spin interactions. Such an apparently irreversible process is known as spin diffusion and it can lead the system back to equilibrium. Even so, a unitary quantum dynamics would ensure a precise memory of the non-equilibrium initial condition. Then, if at certain time, say $t/2$, an experimental protocol reverses the many-body dynamics, it would drive the system back to the initial non-equilibrium state at time $t$. As a matter of fact, the reversal is always perturbed by small experimental imperfections and/or uncontrolled internal or environmental degrees of freedom. This limits the amount of signal $M(t)$ recovered locally at time $t$. The degradation of $M(t)$ accounts for these perturbations, which can also be seen as the sources of decoherence. This idea defines the Loschmidt echo (LE), which embodies the various time-reversal procedures implemented in nuclear magnetic resonance. Here, we present an invitation to the study of the LE following the pathway induced by the experiments. With such a purpose, we provide a historical and conceptual overview that briefly revisits selected phenomena that underlie the LE dynamics, ultimately leading to the discussion of irreversibility as an emergent phenomenon. In addition, we introduce the LE formalism by means of spin-spin correlation functions and we present new results that could trigger new experiments and theoretical ideas. In particular, we propose to transform an initially localized excitation into a more complex initial state, enabling a dynamically prepared LE. This induces a global definition of the LE in terms of the raw overlap between many-body wave functions. Our results show that as the complexity of the prepared state increases, it becomes more fragile towards small perturbations.
Loschmidt echo (LE) is a measure of reversibility and sensitivity to perturbations of quantum evolutions. For weak perturbations its decay rate is given by the width of the local density of states (LDOS). When the perturbation is strong enough, it has been shown in chaotic systems that its decay is dictated by the classical Lyapunov exponent. However, several recent studies have shown an unexpected non-uniform decay rate as a function of the perturbation strength instead of that Lyapunov decay. Here we study the systematic behavior of this regime in perturbed cat maps. We show that some perturbations produce coherent oscillations in the width of LDOS that imprint clear signals of the perturbation in LE decay. We also show that if the perturbation acts in a small region of phase space (local perturbation) the effect is magnified and the decay is given by the width of the LDOS.
We study the decay rate of the Loschmidt echo or fidelity in a chaotic system under a time-dependent perturbation $V(q,t)$ with typical strength $hbar/tau_{V}$. The perturbation represents the action of an uncontrolled environment interacting with the system, and is characterized by a correlation length $xi_0$ and a correlation time $tau_0$. For small perturbation strengths or rapid fluctuating perturbations, the Loschmidt echo decays exponentially with a rate predicted by the Fermi Golden Rule, $1/tilde{tau}= tau_{c}/tau_{V}^2$, where typically $tau_{c} sim min[tau_{0},xi_0/v]$ with $v$ the particle velocity. Whenever the rate $1/tilde{tau}$ is larger than the Lyapunov exponent of the system, a perturbation independent Lyapunov decay regime arises. We also find that by speeding up the fluctuations (while keeping the perturbation strength fixed) the fidelity decay becomes slower, and hence, one can protect the system against decoherence.
Environment--induced decoherence causes entropy increase. It can be quantified using, e.g., the purity $varsigma={rm Tr}rho^2$. When the Hamiltonian of a quantum system is perturbed, its sensitivity to such perturbation can be measured by the Loschmidt echo $bar M(t)$. It is given by the average squared overlap between the perturbed and unperturbed state. We describe the relation between the temporal behavior of $varsigma(t)$ and $bar M(t)$. In this way we show that the decay of the Loschmidt echo can be analyzed using tools developed in the study of decoherence. In particular, for systems with a classically chaotic Hamiltonian the decay of $varsigma$ and $bar M$ has a regime where it is dominated by the classical Lyapunov exponents
The Loschmidt echo, defined as the overlap between quantum wave function evolved with different Hamiltonians, quantifies the sensitivity of quantum dynamics to perturbations and is often used as a probe of quantum chaos. In this work we consider the behavior of the Loschmidt echo in the many body localized phase, which is characterized by emergent local integrals of motion, and provides a generic example of non-ergodic dynamics. We demonstrate that the fluctuations of the Loschmidt echo decay as a power law in time in the many-body localized phase, in contrast to the exponential decay in few-body ergodic systems. We consider the spin-echo generalization of the Loschmidt echo, and argue that the corresponding correlation function saturates to a finite value in localized systems. Slow, power-law decay of fluctuations of such spin-echo-type overlap is related to the operator spreading and is present only in the many-body localized phase, but not in a non-interacting Anderson insulator. While most of the previously considered probes of dephasing dynamics could be understood by approximating physical spin operators with local integrals of motion, the Loschmidt echo and its generalizations crucially depend on the full expansion of the physical operators via local integrals of motion operators, as well as operators which flip local integrals of motion. Hence, these probes allow to get insights into the relation between physical operators and local integrals of motion, and access the operator spreading in the many-body localized phase.