We propose an unsupervised learning methodology build on a Gaussian mixture model computed on topological descriptors from persistent homology, for the structural analysis of materials at the atomic scale. Based only on atomic positions and without t
extit{a priori} knowledge, our method automatically identifies relevant local atomic structures in a system of interest. Along with a complete description of the procedure, we provide a concrete example of application by analysing large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of bulks crystal and liquid as well as homogeneous nucleation events of elemental Zr at the nose of the time-temperature-transformation curve. This method opens the way to deeper and autonomous studies of structural dependent phenomena occurring at the atomic scale in materials.
For various engineering and industrial applications it is desirable to realize mechanical systems with broadly adjustable elasticity to respond flexibly to the external environment. Here we discover a topology-correlated transition between affine and
non-affine regimes in elasticity in both two- and three-dimensional packing-derived networks. Based on this transition, we numerically design and experimentally realize multifunctional systems with adjustable elasticity. Within one system, we achieve solid-like affine response, liquid-like non-affine response and a continuous tunability in between. Moreover, the system also exhibits a broadly tunable Poissons ratio from positive to negative values, which is of practical interest for energy absorption and for fracture-resistant materials. Our study reveals a fundamental connection between elasticity and network topology, and demonstrates its practical potential for designing mechanical systems and metamaterials.
It is well known that in Anderson localized systems, starting from a random product state the entanglement entropy remains bounded at all times. However, we show that adding a single boundary term to an otherwise Anderson localized Hamiltonian leads
to unbounded growth of entanglement. Our results imply that Anderson localization is not a local property. One cannot conclude that a subsystem has Anderson localized behavior without looking at the whole system, as a term that is arbitrarily far from the subsystem can affect the dynamics of the subsystem in such a way that the features of Anderson localization are lost.
This is a reply to the comment from Khemani, Moessner and Sondhi (KMS) [arXiv:2109.00551] on our manuscript [Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 030401 (2017)]. The main new claim in KMS is that the short-ranged model does not support an MBL DTC phase. We show tha
t, even for the parameter values they consider and the system sizes they study, the claim is an artifact of an unusual choice of range for the crucial plots. Conducting a standard finite-size scaling analysis on the same data strongly suggests that the system is in fact a many-body localized (MBL) discrete time crystal (DTC). Furthermore, we have carried out additional simulations at larger scales, and provide an analytic argument, which fully support the conclusions of our original paper. We also show that the effect of boundary conditions, described as essential by KMS, is exactly what one would expect, with boundary effects decreasing with increasing system size. The other points in KMS are either a rehashing of points already in the literature (for the long-ranged model) or are refuted by a proper finite-size scaling analysis.
Many-body localization (MBL) is an example of a dynamical phase of matter that avoids thermalization. While the MBL phase is robust to weak local perturbations, the fate of an MBL system coupled to a thermalizing quantum system that represents a heat
bath is an open question that is actively investigated theoretically and experimentally. In this work we consider the stability of an Anderson insulator with a finite density of particles interacting with a single mobile impurity -- a small quantum bath. We give perturbative arguments that support the stability of localization in the strong interaction regime. Large scale tensor network simulations of dynamics are employed to corroborate the presence of the localized phase and give quantitative predictions in the thermodynamic limit. We develop a phenomenological description of the dynamics in the strong interaction regime, and demonstrate that the impurity effectively turns the Anderson insulator into an MBL phase, giving rise to non-trivial entanglement dynamics well captured by our phenomenology.
The Aubry-Andre model is a one-dimensional lattice model for quasicrystals with localized and delocalized phases. At the localization transition point, the system displays fractal spectrum, which relates to the Hofstadter butterfly. In this work, we
uncover the exact self-similarity structures in the energy spectrum. We separate the fractal structures into two parts: the fractal filling positions of gaps and the scaling of gap sizes. We show that the fractal fillings emerge for a certain type of incommensurate periodicity regardless of potential strength. However, the power-law scaling of gap sizes is characteristic for general incommensurability at the critical point of the model.
We study the matrix elements of local and nonlocal operators in the single-particle eigenstates of two paradigmatic quantum-chaotic quadratic Hamiltonians; the quadratic Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK2) model and the three-dimensional Anderson model below th
e localization transition. We show that they display eigenstate thermalization for normalized observables. Specifically, we show that the diagonal matrix elements exhibit vanishing eigenstate-to-eigenstate fluctuations, and a variance proportional to the inverse Hilbert space dimension. We also demonstrate that the ratio between the variance of the diagonal and the off-diagonal matrix elements is $2$, as predicted by the random matrix theory. We study distributions of matrix elements of observables and establish that they need not be Gaussian. We identify the class of observables for which the distributions are Gaussian.
We numerically investigate the structure of many-body wave functions of 1D random quantum circuits with local measurements employing the participation entropies. The leading term in system size dependence of participation entropies indicates a multif
ractal scaling of the wave-functions at any non-zero measurement rate. The sub-leading term contains universal information about measurement--induced phase transitions and plays the role of an order parameter, being non-zero in the error-correcting phase and vanishing in the quantum Zeno phase. We provide an analytical interpretation of this behavior expressing the participation entropy in terms of partition functions of classical statistical models in 2D.
We design a quantum battery made up of bosons or fermions in an ultracold atom setup, described by Fermi-Hubbard (FH) and Bose-Hubbard (BH) models respectively. We compare the performance of bosons as well as fermions and check which can act more eff
iciently as a quantum battery for a given on-site interaction and temperature of the initial state. The performance of a quantum battery is quantified by the maximum power generated over the time evolution under an on-site charging Hamiltonian. We report that when the initial battery state is in the ground state, fermions outperform bosons in a certain configuration over a large range of on-site interactions which are shown analytically for a smaller number of lattice sites and numerically for a considerable number of sites. Bosons take the lead when the temperature is comparatively high in the initial state for a longer range of on-site interaction. We perform the study of a number of up and down fermions as well as the number of bosons per site to find the optimal filling factor for maximizing the power of the battery. We also introduce disorder in both on-site and hopping parameters and demonstrate that the maximum power is robust against impurities. Moreover, we identify a range of tuning parameters in the fermionic as well as bosonic systems where the disorder-enhanced power is observed.
Nucleation phenomena commonly observed in our every day life are of fundamental, technological and societal importance in many areas, but some of their most intimate mechanisms remain however to be unravelled. Crystal nucleation, the early stages whe
re the liquid-to-solid transition occurs upon undercooling, initiates at the atomic level on nanometre length and sub-picoseconds time scales and involves complex multidimensional mechanisms with local symmetry breaking that can hardly be observed experimentally in the very details. To reveal their structural features in simulations without a priori, an unsupervised learning approach founded on topological descriptors loaned from persistent homology concepts is proposed. Applied here to monatomic metals, it shows that both translational and orientational ordering always come into play simultaneously when homogeneous nucleation starts in regions with low five-fold symmetry. It also reveals the specificity of the nucleation pathways depending on the element considered, with features beyond the hypothesis of Classical Nucleation Theory.
