No Arabic abstract
Given a quantum many-body system and the expectation-value dynamics of some operator, we study how this reference dynamics is altered due to a perturbation of the systems Hamiltonian. Based on projection operator techniques, we unveil that if the perturbation exhibits a random-matrix structure in the eigenbasis of the unperturbed Hamiltonian, then this perturbation effectively leads to an exponential damping of the original dynamics. Employing a combination of dynamical quantum typicality and numerical linked cluster expansions, we demonstrate that our theoretical findings for random matrices can, in some cases, be relevant for the dynamics of realistic quantum many-body models as well. Specifically, we study the decay of current autocorrelation functions in spin-$1/2$ ladder systems, where the rungs of the ladder are treated as a perturbation to the otherwise uncoupled legs. We find a convincing agreement between the exact dynamics and the lowest-order prediction over a wide range of interchain couplings.
We show that macroscopic nonintegrable lattices of spins 1/2, which are often considered to be chaotic, do not exhibit the basic property of classical chaotic systems, namely, exponential sensitivity to small perturbations. We compare chaotic lattices of classical spins and nonintegrable lattices of spins 1/2 in terms of their magnetization responses to imperfect reversal of spin dynamics known as Loschmidt echo. In the classical case, magnetization exhibits exponential sensitivity to small perturbations of Loschmidt echoes, which is characterized by twice the value of the largest Lyapunov exponent of the system. In the case of spins 1/2, magnetization is only power-law sensitive to small perturbations. Our findings imply that it is impossible to define Lyapunov exponents for lattices of spins 1/2 even in the macroscopic limit. At the same time, the above absence of exponential sensitivity to small perturbations is an encouraging news for the efforts to create quantum simulators. The power-law sensitivity of spin 1/2 lattices to small perturbations is predicted to be measurable in nuclear magnetic resonance experiments.
In quantum many-body systems with local interactions, the effects of boundary conditions are considered to be negligible, at least for sufficiently large systems. Here we show an example of the opposite. We consider a spin chain with two competing interactions, set on a ring with an odd number of sites. When only the dominant interaction is antiferromagnetic, and thus induces topological frustration, the standard antiferromagnetic order (expressed by the magnetization) is destroyed. When also the second interaction turns from ferro to antiferro, an antiferromagnetic order characterized by a site-dependent magnetization which varies in space with an incommensurate pattern, emerges. This modulation results from a ground state degeneracy, which allows to break the translational invariance. The transition between the two cases is signaled by a discontinuity in the first derivative of the ground state energy and represents a quantum phase transition induced by a special choice of boundary conditions.
Diffusion on a diluted hypercube has been proposed as a model for glassy relaxation and is an example of the more general class of stochastic processes on graphs. In this article we determine numerically through large scale simulations the eigenvalue spectra for this stochastic process and calculate explicitly the time evolution for the autocorrelation function and for the return probability, all at criticality, with hypercube dimensions $N$ up to N=28. We show that at long times both relaxation functions can be described by stretched exponentials with exponent 1/3 and a characteristic relaxation time which grows exponentially with dimension $N$. The numerical eigenvalue spectra are consistent with analytic predictions for a generic sparse network model.
With a scalar potential and a bivector potential, the vector field associated with the drift of a diffusion is decomposed into a generalized gradient field, a field perpendicular to the gradient, and a divergence-free field. We give such decomposition a probabilistic interpretation by introducing cycle velocity from a bivectorial formalism of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. New understandings on the mean rates of thermodynamic quantities are presented. Deterministic dynamical system is further proven to admit a generalized gradient form with the emerged potential as the Lyapunov function by the method of random perturbations.
We establish a general connection between ballistic and diffusive transport in systems where the ballistic contribution in canonical ensemble vanishes. A lower bound on the Green-Kubo diffusion constant is derived in terms of the curvature of the ideal transport coefficient, the Drude weight, with respect to the filling parameter. As an application, we explicitly determine the lower bound on the high temperature diffusion constant in the anisotropic spin 1/2 Heisenberg chain for anisotropy parameters $Delta geq 1$, thus settling the question whether the transport is sub-diffusive or not. Addi- tionally, the lower bound is shown to saturate the diffusion constant for a certain classical integrable model.