No Arabic abstract
We employ variational autoencoders to extract physical insight from a dataset of one-particle Anderson impurity model spectral functions. Autoencoders are trained to find a low-dimensional, latent space representation that faithfully characterizes each element of the training set, as measured by a reconstruction error. Variational autoencoders, a probabilistic generalization of standard autoencoders, further condition the learned latent space to promote highly interpretable features. In our study, we find that the learned latent space components strongly correlate with well known, but nontrivial, parameters that characterize emergent behaviors in the Anderson impurity model. In particular, one latent space component correlates with particle-hole asymmetry, while another is in near one-to-one correspondence with the Kondo temperature, a dynamically generated low-energy scale in the impurity model. With symbolic regression, we model this component as a function of bare physical input parameters and rediscover the non-perturbative formula for the Kondo temperature. The machine learning pipeline we develop opens opportunities to discover new domain knowledge in other physical systems.
A longstanding open problem in condensed matter physics is whether or not a strongly disordered interacting insulator can be mapped to a system of effectively non-interacting localized excitations. We investigate this issue on the insulating side of the 3D metal-insulator transition (MIT) in phosphorus doped silicon using the new technique of terahertz two dimensional coherent spectroscopy. Despite the intrinsically disordered nature of these materials, we observe coherent excitations and strong photon echoes that provide us with a powerful method for the study of their decay processes. We extract the first measurements of energy relaxation ($T_1$) and decoherence ($T_2$) times close to the MIT in this classic system. We observe that (i) both relaxation rates are linear in excitation frequency with a slope close to unity, (ii) the energy relaxation timescale $T_1$ counterintuitively increases with increasing temperature and (iii) the coherence relaxation timescale $T_2$ has little temperature dependence between 5 K and 25 K, but counterintuitively increases as the material is doped towards the MIT. We argue that these features imply that (a) the system behaves as a well isolated electronic system on the timescales of interest, and (b) relaxation is controlled by electron-electron interactions. We discuss the potential relaxation channels that may explain the behavior. Our observations constitute a qualitatively new phenomenology, driven by the interplay of strong disorder and strong electron-electron interactions, which we dub the marginal Fermi glass.
Pursuing fractionalized particles that do not bear properties of conventional measurable objects, exemplified by bare particles in the vacuum such as electrons and elementary excitations such as magnons, is a challenge in physics. Here we show that a machine-learning method for quantum many-body systems that has achieved state-of-the-art accuracy reveals the existence of a quantum spin liquid (QSL) phase in the region $0.49lesssim J_2/J_1lesssim0.54$ convincingly in spin-1/2 frustrated Heisenberg model with the nearest and next-nearest neighbor exchanges, $J_1$ and $J_2$, respectively, on the square lattice. This is achieved by combining with the cutting-edge computational schemes known as the correlation ratio and level spectroscopy methods to mitigate the finite-size effects. The quantitative one-to-one correspondence between the correlations in the ground state and the excitation spectra enables the reliable identification and estimation of the QSL and its nature. The spin excitation spectra containing both singlet and triplet gapless Dirac-like dispersions signal the emergence of gapless fractionalized spin-1/2 Dirac-type spinons in the distinctive QSL phase. Unexplored critical behavior with coexisting and dual power-law decays of N{e}el antiferromagnetic and dimer correlations is revealed. The power-law decay exponents of the two correlations differently vary with $J_2/J_1$ in the QSL phase and thus have different values except for a single point satisfying the symmetry of the two correlations. The isomorph of excitations with the cuprate $d$-wave superconductors implies a tight connection between the present QSL and superconductivity. This achievement demonstrates that the quantum-state representation using machine learning techniques, which had mostly been limited to benchmarks, is a promising tool for investigating grand challenges in quantum many-body physics.
Machine learning promises to deliver powerful new approaches to neutron scattering from magnetic materials. Large scale simulations provide the means to realise this with approaches including spin-wave, Landau Lifshitz, and Monte Carlo methods. These approaches are shown to be effective at simulating magnetic structures and dynamics in a wide range of materials. Using large numbers of simulations the effectiveness of machine learning approaches are assessed. Principal component analysis and nonlinear autoencoders are considered with the latter found to provide a high degree of compression and to be highly suited to neutron scattering problems. Agglomerative heirarchical clustering in the latent space is shown to be effective at extracting phase diagrams of behavior and features in an automated way that aid understanding and interpretation. The autoencoders are also well suited to optimizing model parameters and were found to be highly advantageous over conventional fitting approaches including being tolerant of artifacts in untreated data. The potential of machine learning to automate complex data analysis tasks including the inversion of neutron scattering data into models and the processing of large volumes of multidimensional data is assessed. Directions for future developments are considered and machine learning argued to have high potential for impact on neutron science generally.
We study one-dimensional Kondo Lattices (KL) which consist of itinerant electrons interacting with Kondo impurities (KI) - localized quantum magnetic moments. We focus on KL with isotropic exchange interaction between electrons and KI and with a high KI density. The latter determines the principal role of the indirect interaction between KI for the low energy physics. Namely, the Kondo physics becomes suppressed and all properties are governed by spin ordering. We present a first-ever comprehensive analytical theory of such KL at an arbitrary doping and predict a variety of regimes with different electronic phases. They range from commensurate insulators (at filling factors 1/2, 1/4 and 3/4) to metals with strongly interacting conduction electrons (close to these three special cases) to an exotic phase of a helical metal. The helical metals can provide a unique platform for realization of an emergent protection of ballistic transport in quantum wires. We compare out theory with previously obtained numerical results and discuss possible experiments where the theory could be tested.
Apparent critical phenomena, typically indicated by growing correlation lengths and dynamical slowing-down, are ubiquitous in non-equilibrium systems such as supercooled liquids, amorphous solids, active matter and spin glasses. It is often challenging to determine if such observations are related to a true second-order phase transition as in the equilibrium case, or simply a crossover, and even more so to measure the associated critical exponents. Here, we show that the simulation results of a hard-sphere glass in three dimensions, are consistent with the recent theoretical prediction of a Gardner transition, a continuous non-equilibrium phase transition. Using a hybrid molecular simulation-machine learning approach, we obtain scaling laws for both finite-size and aging effects, and determine the critical exponents that traditional methods fail to estimate. Our study provides a novel approach that is useful to understand the nature of glass transitions, and can be generalized to analyze other non-equilibrium phase transitions.