Dynamical phase transitions extend the notion of criticality to non-stationary settings and are characterized by sudden changes in the macroscopic properties of time-evolving quantum systems. Investigations of dynamical phase transitions combine aspe
cts of symmetry, topology, and non-equilibrium physics, however, progress has been hindered by the notorious difficulties of predicting the time evolution of large, interacting quantum systems. Here, we tackle this outstanding problem by determining the critical times of interacting many-body systems after a quench using Loschmidt cumulants. Specifically, we investigate dynamical topological phase transitions in the interacting Kitaev chain and in the spin-1 Heisenberg chain. To this end, we map out the thermodynamic lines of complex times, where the Loschmidt amplitude vanishes, and identify the intersections with the imaginary axis, which yield the real critical times after a quench. For the Kitaev chain, we can accurately predict how the critical behavior is affected by strong interactions, which gradually shift the time at which a dynamical phase transition occurs. Our work demonstrates that Loschmidt cumulants are a powerful tool to unravel the far-from-equilibrium dynamics of strongly correlated many-body systems, and our approach can immediately be applied in higher dimensions.
We investigate multicomponent fermions in a flat band and predict experimental signatures of non-Fermi liquid behavior. We use dynamical mean-field theory to obtain the density, double occupancy and entropy in a Lieb lattice for $mathcal{N} = 2$ and
$mathcal{N} = 4$ components. We derive a mean-field scaling relation between the results for different values of $mathcal{N}$, and study its breakdown due to beyond-mean field effects. The predicted signatures occur at temperatures above the Neel temperature and persist in presence of a harmonic trapping potential, thus they are observable with current ultracold gas experiments.
We consider two-body bound states in a flat band of a multiband system. The existence of pair dispersion predicts the possibility of breaking the degeneracy of the band and creating order, such as superconductivity. Within a separable interaction pot
ential approximation, we find that finiteness of the effective mass of a bound pair is determined by a band structure invariant, which in the uniform case becomes the quantum metric. The results offer a simple foundation to understand and predict flat band superconductivity. We propose an experiment to test the interaction-induced pair motion.
In a flat Bloch band the kinetic energy is quenched and single particles cannot propagate since they are localized due to destructive interference. Whether this remains true in the presence of interactions is a challenging question because a flat dis
persion usually leads to highly correlated ground states. Here we compute numerically the ground state energy of lattice models with completely flat band structure in a ring geometry. We find that the energy as a function of the magnetic flux threading the ring has a half-flux quantum $Phi_0/2 = hc/(2e)$ period, indicating that only bound pairs of particles with charge $2e$ are propagating, while single quasiparticles with charge $e$ remain localized. We show analytically in one dimension that in fact the whole many-body spectrum has the same periodicity. Our analytical arguments are valid for both bosons and fermions, for generic interactions respecting some symmetries of the lattice and at arbitrary temperatures. Moreover we construct an extensive number of exact conserved quantities for the one dimensional lattice models. These conserved quantities are associated to the occupation of localized single quasiparticle states. Our results imply that in lattice models with flat bands preformed pairs dominate transport even above the critical temperature of the transition to a superfluid state.
We study the dynamics of the Bogoliubov wave packet in superconductors and calculate the supercurrent carried by the wave packet. We discover an anomalous contribution to the supercurrent, related to the quantum metric of the Bloch wave function. Thi
s anomalous contribution is most important for flat or quasiflat bands, as exemplified by the attractive Hubbard models on the Creutz ladder and sawtooth lattice. Our theoretical framework is general and can be used to study a wide variety of phenomena, such as spin transport and exciton transport.
In addition to the usual superconducting current, Josephson junctions (JJs) support a phase-dependent conductance related to the retardation effect of tunneling quasi-particles. This introduces a dissipative current with a memory-resistive (memristiv
e) character and thus should also affect the current noise. By means of the microscopic theory of tunnel junctions we compute the complete current autocorrelation function of a Josephson tunnel junction and show that this memristive component gives rise to a non-stationary, phase-dependent noise. As a consequence, dynamic and thermal noise necessarily show a phase dependence otherwise absent in nondissipative JJ models. This phase dependence may be realized experimentally as a hysteresis effect if the unavoidable time averaging of the experimental probe is shorter than the period of the Josephson phase.
We present a theory of the superfluid weight in multiband attractive Hubbard models within the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) mean field framework. We show how to separate the geometric contribution to the superfluid weight from the conventional one
, and that the geometric contribution is associated with the interband matrix elements of the current operator. Our theory can be applied to systems with or without time reversal symmetry. In both cases the geometric superfluid weight can be related to the quantum metric of the corresponding noninteracting systems. This leads to a lower bound on the superfluid weight given by the absolute value of the Berry curvature. We apply our theory to the attractive Kane-Mele-Hubbard and Haldane-Hubbard models, which can be realized in ultracold atom gases. Quantitative comparisons are made to state of the art dynamical mean-field theory and exact diagonalization results.
In a partially filled flat Bloch band electrons do not have a well defined Fermi surface and hence the low-energy theory is not a Fermi liquid. Neverethless, under the influence of an attractive interaction, a superconductor well described by the Bar
deen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) wave function can arise. Here we study the low-energy effective Hamiltonian of a generic Hubbard model with a flat band. We obtain an effective Hamiltonian for the flat band physics by eliminating higher lying bands via perturbative Schrieffer-Wolff transformation. At first order in the interaction energy we recover the usual procedure of projecting the interaction term onto the flat band Wannier functions. We show that the BCS wave function is the exact ground state of the projected interaction Hamiltonian and that the compressibility is diverging as a consequence of an emergent $SU(2)$ symmetry. This symmetry is broken by second order interband transitions resulting in a finite compressibility, which we illustrate for a one-dimensional ladder with two perfectly flat bands. These results motivate a further approximation leading to an effective ferromagnetic Heisenberg model. The gauge-invariant result for the superfluid weight of a flat band can be obtained from the ferromagnetic Heisenberg model only if the maximally localized Wannier functions in the Marzari-Vanderbilt sense are used. Finally, we prove an important inequality $D geq mathcal{W}^2$ between the Drude weight $D$ and the winding number $mathcal{W}$, which guarantees ballistic transport for topologically nontrivial flat bands in one dimension.
The ground state and transport properties of the Lieb lattice flat band in the presence of an attractive Hubbard interaction are considered. It is shown that the superfluid weight can be large even for an isolated and strictly flat band. Moreover the
superfluid weight is proportional to the interaction strength and to the quantum metric, a band structure invariant obtained from the flat-band Bloch functions. These predictions are amenable to verification with ultracold gases and may explain the anomalous behaviour of the superfluid weight of high-Tc superconductors.
By means of time-dependent density-matrix renormalization-group (TDMRG) we are able to follow the real-time dynamics of a single impurity embedded in a one-dimensional bath of interacting bosons. We focus on the impurity breathing mode, which is foun
d to be well-described by a single oscillation frequency and a damping rate. If the impurity is very weakly coupled to the bath, a Luttinger-liquid description is valid and the impurity suffers an Abraham-Lorentz radiation-reaction friction. For a large portion of the explored parameter space, the TDMRG results fall well beyond the Luttinger-liquid paradigm.
