arXiv subjects

Anatoli Polkovnikov

Publications and source records attributed to Anatoli Polkovnikov.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Universal Dynamical Response to Slow Driving in Chaotic Systems

We propose a unified perspective on classical and quantum chaos based on the stability of a system's stationary states under slow driving. We probe this sensitivity via the system's susceptibility to the average protocol speed, which we call the ``speed-Fisher information," and relate it to irreversible entropy production in the system. We show that chaotic dynamics manifests as a divergence of the speed-Fisher information with the protocol time, and that this response is controlled by the perturbation's low-frequency spectral weight. This approach to chaos applies to both classical and quantum Hamiltonian systems, and naturally extends to non-Hamiltonian classical flows. We illustrate this framework with simple classical and quantum examples, along with a non-Hamiltonian flow that qualitatively exhibits analogous low-frequency spectral behavior.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2026

Sensitivity to perturbations in the three-dimensional Anderson model

We investigate the fidelity susceptibility, which quantifies the sensitivity of single-particle eigenstates to perturbations, in the three-dimensional Anderson model. As a function of disorder strength $W$, it exhibits two distinct peaks. The first peak signals a crossover at weak disorder strength from plane-wave states to single-particle quantum chaos, and its position shifts toward $W\to 0$ in the thermodynamic limit. The second peak emerges, to high numerical accuracy, at the critical disorder strength associated with the Anderson localization transition. We further show that the divergence of the first peak is maximal, scaling as the square of the inverse frequency cutoff, whereas the divergence of the second peak is submaximal. We relate the latter suppression to the fractal structure of single-particle eigenstates at criticality. We discuss two distinct scenarios that give rise to the peaks in the fidelity susceptibilities. Moreover, studying the scaling of typical fidelity susceptibilities above the Anderson transition, we find evidence of two distinct regimes of nonergodic behavior.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2026

Temperature and integrability-breaking correspondence via adiabatic transformations

We reveal a correspondence between temperature and integrability-breaking in classical and quantum many-body systems through the lens of geometry and adiabatic transformations. Decreasing the temperature, obtained in a standard way through the derivative of entropy with respect to energy, steers the system towards an integrable point despite strong integrability-breaking interactions. Auto-correlation functions of local observables exhibit slow relaxation dynamics, which violates ergodicity on the approach to this integrable point. Subsequently, the average fidelity susceptibility of stationary states satisfies scaling relations near the integrable point, in close analogy with continuous phase transitions. We further find that the dynamical exponent encompassing relaxation can be different in the quantum and classical models, depending on dimension of the systems. Collectively, our results establish temperature as a tunable control parameter for chaos and puts it on equal footing with integrability-breaking perturbations.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2026

Partial Reversibility and Counterdiabatic Driving in Nearly Integrable Systems

Adiabatic (or reversible) processes are the key concept unifying our understanding of thermodynamics and dynamical systems. Reversibility in the thermodynamic sense is understood as entropy-preserving processes, such as in the idealized Carnot engine, whereas in integrable dynamical systems it is understood as the conservation of the action variables. Between these two idealized limits, however, things are much less clear. In this work, we study several toy models to assess the extent to which reversible processes are even possible in this regime. We then explore how the dissipative losses resulting from rapidly driving these kinds of systems can be fought by approximate counterdiabatic driving. Finally, we provide numerical evidence that much of the phenomenology should be the same for quantum many-body systems with large degeneracy in the presence of integrability breaking perturbations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Confined and deconfined chaos in classical spin systems

Weakly perturbed integrable many-body systems are typically chaotic, and thermal at late times. However, there are distinct relationships between the timescales for thermalization and chaos. The typical relationship is confined chaos: when trajectories are still confined to regions in phase space with constant conserved quantities (actions), the conjugate angle variables are already unstable. Chaotic instabilities thus far precede thermalization. In a different relationship, which we term deconfined chaos, chaotic instabilities and thermalization occur on the same timescale. We investigate these two qualitatively distinct scenarios through numerical and analytical studies of two perturbed integrable classical spin models: the Ishimori spin chain (confined chaos), and the central spin model with XX interactions (deconfined chaos). We analytically establish (super)-integrability in the latter model in a microcanonical shell. Deconfined chaos emerges through the separation of phase space into large quasi-integrable regions and a thin chaotic manifold. The latter leads to chaos and thermalization on the fastest possible timescale, which is proportional to the inverse perturbation strength. This behavior is reminiscent of the quantum SYK models and strange metals.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2025

Random matrix universality in dynamical correlation functions at late times

We study the behavior of two-time correlation functions at late times for finite system sizes considering observables whose (one-point) average value does not depend on energy. In the long time limit, we show that such correlation functions display a ramp and a plateau determined by the correlations of energy levels, similar to what is already known for the spectral form factor. The plateau value is determined, in absence of degenerate energy levels, by the fluctuations of diagonal matrix elements, which highlights differences between different symmetry classes. We show this behavior analytically by employing results from Random Matrix Theory and the Eigenstate Thermalisation Hypothesis, and numerically by exact diagonalization in the toy example of a Hamiltonian drawn from a Random Matrix ensemble and in a more realistic example of disordered spin glasses at high temperature. Importantly, correlation functions in the ramp regime do not show self-averaging behaviour, and, at difference with the spectral form factor the time average does not coincide with the ensemble average.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2025

Universal Counterdiabatic Driving

Local counterdiabatic (CD) driving provides a systematic way of constructing a control protocol to approximately suppress the excitations resulting from changing some parameter(s) of a quantum system at a finite rate. However, designing CD protocols typically requires knowledge of the original Hamiltonian a priori. In this work, we design local CD driving protocols in Krylov space using only the characteristic local time scales of the system set by e.g. phonon frequencies in materials or Rabi frequencies in superconducting qubit arrays. Surprisingly, we find that convergence of these universal protocols is controlled by the asymptotic high frequency tails of the response functions. This finding hints at a deep connection between the long-time, low frequency response of the system controlling non-adiabatic effects, and the high-frequency response determined by the short-time operator growth and the Krylov complexity, which has been elusive until now.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

The Moving Born-Oppenheimer Approximation

We develop a mixed quantum-classical framework, dubbed the Moving Born-Oppenheimer Approximation (MBOA), to describe the dynamics of slow degrees of freedom (DOFs) coupled to fast ones. As in the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation (BOA), the fast degrees of freedom adiabatically follow a state that depends on the slow ones. Unlike the BOA, this state depends on both the positions and the momenta of the slow DOFs. We study several model systems: a spin-1/2 particle and a spinful molecule moving in a spatially inhomogeneous magnetic field, and a gas of fast particles coupled to a piston. The MBOA reveals rich dynamics for the slow degree of freedom, including reflection, dynamical trapping, and mass renormalization. It also significantly modifies the state of the fast DOFs. For example, the spins in the molecule are entangled and squeezed, while the gas of fast particles develops gradients that are synchronized with the motion of the piston for a long time. The MBOA can be used to describe both classical and quantum systems and has potential applications in quantum chemistry, correlated materials, atomic physics, molecular dynamics, and quantum sensing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Probing quantum many-body dynamics using subsystem Loschmidt echos

The Loschmidt echo - the probability of a quantum many-body system to return to its initial state following a dynamical evolution - generally contains key information about a quantum system, relevant across various scientific fields including quantum chaos, quantum many-body physics, or high-energy physics. However, it is typically exponentially small in system size, posing an outstanding challenge for experiments. Here, we experimentally investigate the subsystem Loschmidt echo, a quasi-local observable that captures key features of the Loschmidt echo while being readily accessible experimentally. Utilizing quantum gas microscopy, we study its short- and long-time dynamics. In the short-time regime, we observe a dynamical quantum phase transition arising from genuine higher-order correlations. In the long-time regime, the subsystem Loschmidt echo allows us to quantitatively determine the effective dimension and structure of the accessible Hilbert space in the thermodynamic limit. Performing these measurements in the ergodic regime and in the presence of emergent kinetic constraints, we provide direct experimental evidence for ergodicity breaking due to fragmentation of the Hilbert space. Our results establish the subsystem Loschmidt echo as a novel and powerful tool that allows paradigmatic studies of both non-equilibrium dynamics and equilibrium thermodynamics of quantum many-body systems, applicable to a broad range of quantum simulation and computing platforms.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2024

Hilbert space geometry and quantum chaos

The quantum geometric tensor (QGT) characterizes the Hilbert space geometry of the eigenstates of a parameter-dependent Hamiltonian. In recent years, the QGT and related quantities have found extensive theoretical and experimental utility, in particular for quantifying quantum phase transitions both at and out of equilibrium. Here we consider the symmetric part (quantum Riemannian metric) of the QGT for various multi-parametric random matrix Hamiltonians and discuss the possible indication of ergodic or integrable behaviour. We found for a two-dimensional parameter space that, while the ergodic phase corresponds to the smooth manifold, the integrable limit marks itself as a singular geometry with a conical defect. Our study thus provides more support for the idea that the landscape of the parameter space yields information on the ergodic-nonergodic transition in complex quantum systems, including the intermediate phase.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2024

Sharp detection of the onset of Floquet heating using eigenstate sensitivity

Chaotic Floquet systems at sufficiently low driving frequencies are known to heat up to an infinite temperature ensemble in the thermodynamic limit. However at high driving frequencies, Floquet systems remain energetically stable in a robust prethermal phase with exponentially long heating times. We propose sensitivity (susceptibility) of Floquet eigenstates against infinitesimal deformations of the drive, as a sharp and sensitive measure to detect this heating transition. It also captures various regimes (timescales) of Floquet thermalization accurately. Particularly, we find that at low frequencies near the onset of unbounded heating, Floquet eigenstates are maximally sensitive to perturbations and consequently the scaled susceptibility develops a sharp maximum. We further connect our results to the relaxation dynamics of local observables to show that near the onset of Floquet heating, the system is nonergodic with slow glassy dynamics despite being nonintegrable at all driving frequencies.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2024

Universal semiclassical dynamics in disordered two-dimensional systems

The dynamics of disordered two-dimensional systems is much less understood than the dynamics of disordered chains, mainly due to the lack of appropriate numerical methods. We demonstrate that a single-trajectory version of the fermionic truncated Wigner approximation (fTWA) gives unexpectedly accurate results for the dynamics of one-dimensional (1D) systems with moderate or strong disorder. Additionally, the computational complexity of calculations carried out within this approximation is small enough to enable studies of two-dimensional (2D) systems larger than standard fTWA. Using this method, we analyze the dynamics of interacting spinless fermions propagating on disordered 1D and 2D lattices. We find for both spatial dimensions that the imbalance exhibits a universal dependence on the rescaled time $t/ξ_W$, where in 2D the time-scale $ξ_W$ follows a stretched-exponential dependence on disorder strength.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2024

Efficient Paths for Local Counterdiabatic Driving

Local counterdiabatic driving (CD) provides a feasible approach for realizing approximate reversible/adiabatic processes like quantum state preparation using only local controls and without demanding excessively long protocol times. However, in many instances getting high accuracy of such CD protocols requires engineering very complicated new controls or pulse sequences. In this work, we describe a systematic method for altering the adiabatic path by adding extra local controls along which performance of local CD protocols is enhanced, both close to and far away from the adiabatic limit. We also identify an iterative procedure to improve the performance of local counterdiabatic driving further without any knowledge of the quantum wavefunction. We then show that these methods provides dramatic improvement in the preparation of non-trivial GHZ ground states of several different spin systems with both short-range and long-range interactions.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Integrability as an attractor of adiabatic flows

The interplay between quantum chaos and integrability has been extensively studied in the past decades. We approach this topic from the point of view of geometry encoded in the quantum geometric tensor, which describes the complexity of adiabatic transformations. In particular, we consider two generic models of spin chains that are parameterized by two independent couplings. In one, the integrability breaking perturbation is global while, in the other, integrability is broken only at the boundary. In both cases, the shortest paths in the coupling space lead towards integrable regions and we argue that this behavior is generic. These regions thus act as attractors of adiabatic flows similar to river basins in nature. Physically, the directions towards integrable regions are characterized by faster relaxation dynamics than those parallel to integrability, and the anisotropy between them diverges in the thermodynamic limit as the system approaches the integrable point. We also provide evidence that the transition from integrable to chaotic behavior is universal for both models, similar to continuous phase transitions, and that the model with local integrability breaking quickly becomes chaotic but avoids ergodicity.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2024

Robust effective ground state in a nonintegrable Floquet quantum circuit

An external periodic (Floquet) drive is believed to bring any initial state to the featureless infinite temperature state in generic nonintegrable isolated quantum many-body systems in the thermodynamic limit, irrespective of the driving frequency $Ω$. However, numerical or analytical evidence either proving or disproving this hypothesis is very limited and the issue has remained unsettled. Here, we study the initial state dependence of Floquet heating in a nonintegrable kicked Ising chain of length up to $L=30$ with an efficient quantum circuit simulator, showing a possible counterexample: The ground state of the effective Floquet Hamiltonian is exceptionally robust against heating, and could stay at finite energy density even after infinitely many Floquet cycles, if the driving period is shorter than a threshold value. This sharp energy localization transition/crossover does not happen for generic excited states. The exceptional robustness of the ground state is interpreted by (i) its isolation in the energy spectrum and (ii) the fact that those states with $L$-independent $\hbarΩ$ energy above the ground state energy of any generic local Hamiltonian, like the approximate Floquet Hamiltonian, are atypical and viewed as a collection of noninteracting quasipartiles. Our finding paves the way for engineering Floquet protocols with finite driving periods realizing long-lived, or possibly even perpetual, Floquet phases by initial state design.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Defining classical and quantum chaos through adiabatic transformations

We propose a formalism which defines chaos in both quantum and classical systems in an equivalent manner by means of \textit{adiabatic transformations}. The complexity of adiabatic transformations which preserve classical time-averaged trajectories (quantum eigenstates) in response to Hamiltonian deformations serves as a measure of chaos. This complexity is quantified by the (properly regularized) fidelity susceptibility. Physically this measure quantifies long time instabilities of physical observables due to small changes in the Hamiltonian of the system. Our exposition clearly showcases the common structures underlying quantum and classical chaos and allows us to distinguish integrable, chaotic but non-thermalizing, and ergodic/mixing regimes. We apply the fidelity susceptibility to a model of two coupled spins and demonstrate that it successfully predicts the universal onset of chaos, both for finite spin $S$ and in the classical limit $S\to\infty$. Interestingly, we find that finite $S$ effects are anomalously large close to integrability.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2023

Probing chaos in the spherical p-spin glass model

We study the dynamics of a quantum $p$-spin glass model starting from initial states defined in microcanonical shells, in a classical regime. We compute different chaos estimators, such as the Lyapunov exponent and the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, and find a marked maximum as a function of the energy of the initial state. By studying the relaxation dynamics and the properties of the energy landscape we show that the maximal chaos emerges in correspondence with the fastest spin relaxation and the maximum complexity, thus suggesting a qualitative picture where chaos emerges as the trajectories are scattered over the exponentially many saddles of the underlying landscape. We also observe hints of ergodicity breaking at low energies, indicated by the correlation function and a maximum of the fidelity susceptibility.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2023

Integrability and quench dynamics in the spin-1 central spin XX model

Central spin models provide an idealized description of interactions between a central degree of freedom and a mesoscopic environment of surrounding spins. We show that the family of models with a spin-1 at the center and XX interactions of arbitrary strength with surrounding spins is integrable. Specifically, we derive an extensive set of conserved quantities and obtain the exact eigenstates using the Bethe ansatz. As in the homogenous limit, the states divide into two exponentially large classes: bright states, in which the spin-1 is entangled with its surroundings, and dark states, in which it is not. On resonance, the bright states further break up into two classes depending on their weight on states with central spin polarization zero. These classes are probed in quench dynamics wherein they prevent the central spin from reaching thermal equilibrium. In the single spin-flip sector we explicitly construct the bright states and show that the central spin exhibits oscillatory dynamics as a consequence of the semilocalization of these eigenstates. We relate the integrability to the closely related class of integrable Richardson-Gaudin models, and conjecture that the spin-$s$ central spin XX model is integrable for any $s$.

cond-mat.str-el↗