No Arabic abstract
Far-from-equilibrium many-body systems, from soap bubbles to suspensions to polymers, learn the drives that push them. This learning has been observed via thermodynamic properties, such as work absorption and strain. We move beyond these macroscopic properties that were first defined for equilibrium contexts: We quantify statistical mechanical learning with machine learning. Our toolkit relies on a structural parallel that we identify between far-from-equilibrium statistical mechanics and representation learning, which is undergone by neural networks that contain bottlenecks, including variational autoencoders. We train a variational autoencoder, via unsupervised learning, on configurations assumed by a many-body system during strong driving. We analyze the neural networks bottleneck to measure the many-body systems classification ability, memory capacity, discrimination ability, and novelty detection. Numerical simulations of a spin glass illustrate our technique. This toolkit exposes self-organization that eludes detection by thermodynamic measures, more reliably and more precisely identifying and quantifying learning by matter.
Many-body systems from soap bubbles to suspensions to polymers learn the drives that push them far from equilibrium. This learning has been detected with thermodynamic properties, such as work absorption and strain. We progress beyond these macroscopic properties that were first defined for equilibrium contexts: We quantify statistical mechanical learning with representation learning, a machine-learning model in which information squeezes through a bottleneck. We identify a structural parallel between representation learning and far-from-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Applying this parallel, we measure four facets of many-body systems learning: classification ability, memory capacity, discrimination ability, and novelty detection. Numerical simulations of a classical spin glass illustrate our technique. This toolkit exposes self-organization that eludes detection by thermodynamic measures. Our toolkit more reliably and more precisely detects and quantifies learning by matter.
We investigate spectral statistics in spatially extended, chaotic many-body quantum systems with a conserved charge. We compute the spectral form factor $K(t)$ analytically for a minimal Floquet circuit model that has a $U(1)$ symmetry encoded via auxiliary spin-$1/2$ degrees of freedom. Averaging over an ensemble of realizations, we relate $K(t)$ to a partition function for the spins, given by a Trotterization of the spin-$1/2$ Heisenberg ferromagnet. Using Bethe Ansatz techniques, we extract the Thouless time $t^{vphantom{*}}_{rm Th}$ demarcating the extent of random matrix behavior, and find scaling behavior governed by diffusion for $K(t)$ at $tlesssim t^{vphantom{*}}_{rm Th}$. We also report numerical results for $K(t)$ in a generic Floquet spin model, which are consistent with these analytic predictions.
We present a framework in which the transition between a many-body localised (MBL) phase and an ergodic one is symmetry breaking. We consider random Floquet spin chains, expressing their averaged spectral form factor (SFF) as a function of time in terms of a transfer matrix that acts in the space direction. The SFF is determined by the leading eigenvalues of this transfer matrix. In the MBL phase the leading eigenvalue is unique, as in a symmetry-unbroken phase, while in the ergodic phase and at late times the leading eigenvalues are asymptotically degenerate, as in a system with degenerate symmetry-breaking phases. We identify the broken symmetry of the transfer matrix, introduce a local order parameter for the transition, and show that the associated correlation functions are long-ranged only in the ergodic phase.
We study a quantum interacting spin system subject to an external drive and coupled to a thermal bath of spatially localized vibrational modes, serving as a model of Dynamic Nuclear Polarization. We show that even when the many-body eigenstates of the system are ergodic, a sufficiently strong coupling to the bath may effectively localize the spins due to many-body quantum Zeno effect, as manifested by the hole-burning shape of the electron paramagnetic resonance spectrum. Our results provide an explanation of the breakdown of the thermal mixing regime experimentally observed above 4 - 5 Kelvin.
We examine the many-body localization (MBL) phase transition in one-dimensional quantum systems with quenched randomness and short-range interactions. Following recent works, we use a strong-randomness renormalization group (RG) approach where the phase transition is due to the so-called avalanche instability of the MBL phase. We show that the critical behavior can be determined analytically within this RG. On a rough $textit{qualitative}$ level the RG flow near the critical fixed point is similar to the Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) flow as previously shown, but there are important differences in the critical behavior. Thus we show that this MBL transition is in a new universality class that is different from KT. The divergence of the correlation length corresponds to critical exponent $ u rightarrow infty$, but the divergence is weaker than for the KT transition.