No Arabic abstract
We develop a truncated Hamiltonian method to study nonequilibrium real time dynamics in the Schwinger model - the quantum electrodynamics in D=1+1. This is a purely continuum method that captures reliably the invariance under local and global gauge transformations and does not require a discretisation of space-time. We use it to study a phenomenon that is expected not to be tractable using lattice methods: we show that the 1+1D quantum electrodynamics admits the dynamical horizon violation effect which was recently discovered in the case of the sine-Gordon model. Following a quench of the model, oscillatory long-range correlations develop, manifestly violating the horizon bound. We find that the oscillation frequencies of the out-of-horizon correlations correspond to twice the masses of the mesons of the model suggesting that the effect is mediated through correlated meson pairs. We also report on the cluster violation in the massive version of the model, previously known in the massless Schwinger model. The results presented here reveal a novel nonequilibrium phenomenon in 1+1D quantum electrodynamics and make a first step towards establishing that the horizon violation effect is present in gauge field theory.
In one dimension, the area law and its implications for the approximability by Matrix Product States are the key to efficient numerical simulations involving quantum states. Similarly, in simulations involving quantum operators, the approximability by Matrix Product Operators (in Hilbert-Schmidt norm) is tied to an operator area law, namely the fact that the Operator Space Entanglement Entropy (OSEE)---the natural analog of entanglement entropy for operators, investigated by Zanardi [Phys. Rev. A 63, 040304(R) (2001)] and by Prosen and Pizorn [Phys. Rev. A 76, 032316 (2007)]---, is bounded. In the present paper, it is shown that the OSEE can be calculated in two-dimensional conformal field theory, in a number of situations that are relevant to questions of simulability of long-time dynamics in one spatial dimension. It is argued that: (i) thermal density matrices $rho propto e^{-beta H}$ and Generalized Gibbs Ensemble density matrices $rho propto e^{- H_{rm GGE}}$ with local $H_{rm GGE}$ generically obey the operator area law; (ii) after a global quench, the OSEE first grows linearly with time, then decreases back to its thermal or GGE saturation value, implying that, while the operator area law is satisfied both in the initial state and in the asymptotic stationary state at large time, it is strongly violated in the transient regime; (iii) the OSEE of the evolution operator $U(t) = e^{-i H t}$ increases linearly with $t$, unless the Hamiltonian is in a localized phase; (iv) local operators in Heisenberg picture, $phi(t) = e^{i H t} phi e^{-i H t}$, have an OSEE that grows sublinearly in time (perhaps logarithmically), however it is unclear whether this effect can be captured in a traditional CFT framework, as the free fermion case hints at an unexpected breakdown of conformal invariance.
We study three different measures of quantum correlations -- entanglement spectrum, entanglement entropy, and logarithmic negativity -- for (1+1)-dimensional massive scalar field in flat spacetime. The entanglement spectrum for the discretized scalar field in the ground state indicates a cross-over in the zero-mode regime, which is further substantiated by an analytical treatment of both entanglement entropy and logarithmic negativity. The exact nature of this cross-over depends on the boundary conditions used -- the leading order term switches from a $log$ to $log-log$ behavior for the Periodic and Neumann boundary conditions. In contrast, for Dirichlet, it is the parameters within the leading $log-log$ term that are switched. We show that this cross-over manifests as a change in the behavior of the leading order divergent term for entanglement entropy and logarithmic negativity close to the zero-mode limit. We thus show that the two regimes have fundamentally different information content. Furthermore, an analysis of the ground state fidelity shows us that the region between critical point $Lambda=0$ and the crossover point is dominated by zero-mode effects, featuring an explicit dependence on the IR cutoff of the system. For the reduced state of a single oscillator, we show that this cross-over occurs in the region $Nam_fsim mathscr{O}(1)$.
We study the dynamics of a quantum Brownian particle weakly coupled to a thermal bath. Working in the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism, we develop an effective action of the particle up to quartic terms. We demonstrate that this quartic effective theory is dual to a stochastic dynamics governed by a non-linear Langevin equation. The Schwinger-Keldysh effective theory, or the equivalent non-linear Langevin dynamics, is insufficient to determine the out of time order correlators (OTOCs) of the particle. To overcome this limitation, we construct an extended effective action in a generalised Schwinger-Keldysh framework. We determine the additional quartic couplings in this OTO effective action and show their dependence on the baths 4-point OTOCs. We analyse the constraints imposed on the OTO effective theory by microscopic reversibility and thermality of the bath. We show that these constraints lead to a generalised fluctuation-dissipation relation between the non-Gaussianity in the distribution of the thermal noise experienced by the particle and the thermal jitter in its damping coefficient. The quartic effective theory developed in this work provides extension of several results previously obtained for the cubic OTO dynamics of a Brownian particle.
The impact of leading collective electronic fluctuations on a free energy of a prototype 1D model for molecular systems is considered within the recently developed Fluctuating Local Field (FLF) approach. The FLF method is a non-perturbative extension of a mean-field theory, where a self-consistent effective constant field is replaced by a fluctuating one. Integrating the fluctuating field out numerically exactly allows to account for collective electronic fluctuations mediated by this field without any assumptions on their magnitude, degree of nonlinearity, etc. Using a half-filled Hubbard ring as a benchmark system, we find that the FLF method noticeably improves a mean-field estimation for the free energy, in particular below the mean-field Neel temperature. We further demonstrate that the mean-field result can be even more improved introducing a multi-mode FLF scheme that additionally takes into account sub-leading fluctuations. Possible applications for the thermodynamics of real molecules are also discussed.
We initiate the study of open quantum field theories using holographic methods. Specifically, we consider a quantum field theory (the system) coupled to a holographic field theory at finite temperature (the environment). We investigate the effects of integrating out the holographic environment with an aim of obtaining an effective dynamics for the resulting open quantum field theory. The influence functionals which enter this open effective action are determined by the real-time (Schwinger-Keldysh) correlation functions of the holographic thermal environment. To evaluate the latter, we exploit recent developments, wherein the semiclassical gravitational Schwinger-Keldysh saddle geometries were identified as complexified black hole spacetimes. We compute real-time correlation functions using holographic methods in these geometries, and argue that they lead to a sensible open effective quantum dynamics for the system in question, a question that hitherto had been left unanswered. In addition to shedding light on open quantum systems coupled to strongly correlated thermal environments, our results also provide a principled computation of Schwinger-Keldysh observables in gravity and holography. In particular, these influence functionals we compute capture both the dissipative physics of black hole quasinormal modes, as well as that of the fluctuations encoded in outgoing Hawking quanta, and interactions between them. We obtain results for these observables at leading order in a low frequency and momentum expansion in general dimensions, in addition to determining explicit results for two dimensional holographic CFT environments.