arXiv subjects

Davide Valenti

Publications and source records attributed to Davide Valenti.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Supratransmission-induced travelling breathers in long Josephson junctions

The emergence of travelling sine-Gordon breathers due to the nonlinear supratransmission effect is theoretically studied in a long Josephson junction driven by suitable magnetic pulses, taking into account the presence of dissipation, a current bias, and a thermal noise source. The simulations clearly indicate that, depending on the pulse's shape and the values of the main system parameters, such a configuration can effectively yield breather excitations only. Furthermore, a nonmonotonic behavior of the breather-only generation probability is observed as a function of the noise intensity. Finally, the dynamics of the supratransmission-induced breathers is characterized by looking at quantities such as their radiative decay lifetime and the medium's energy.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Axion-induced oscillations in Josephson qubits

An effective quantum description of the axion is proposed as a two-level dynamic system together with a spin-spin Hamiltonian for a coupled axion-Josephson qubit system. The interaction between axion and Josephson Junction can be responsible for a resonance effect, when the axion and the Josephson frequencies match. Thus, experimentally detectable oscillations induced in the Josephson qubit by its interaction with the axion are clearly highlighted. This phenomenon, causing a periodic magnetization reversal in the junction, can be exploited for the axion detection in the quantum limit of low noise.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Josephson junction-based axion detection through resonant activation

We discuss the resonant activation phenomenon on a Josephson junction due to the coupling of the Josephson system with axions. We show how such an effect can be exploited for axion detection. A nonmonotonic behavior, with a minimum, of the mean switching time from the superconducting to the resistive state versus the ratio of the axion energy and the Josephson plasma energy is found. We demonstrate how variations in switching times make it possible to detect the presence of the axion field. An experimental protocol for observing axions through their coupling with a Josephson system is proposed.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Multiparameter quantum critical metrology

Single parameter estimation is known to benefit from extreme sensitivity to parameter changes in quantum critical systems. However, the simultaneous estimation of multiple parameters is generally limited due to the incompatibility arising from the quantum nature of the underlying system. A key question is whether quantum criticality may also play a positive role in reducing the incompatibility in the simultaneous estimation of multiple parameters. We argue that this is generally the case and verify this prediction in paradigmatic quantum many-body systems close to first and second order phase transitions. The antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic 1-D Ising chain with both transverse and longitudinal fields are analysed across different regimes and close to criticality.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Generation of travelling sine-Gordon breathers in noisy long Josephson junctions

The generation of travelling sine-Gordon breathers is achieved through the nonlinear supratransmission effect in a magnetically driven long Josephson junction, in the presence of losses, a current bias, and a thermal noise source. We demonstrate how to exclusively induce breather modes by means of controlled magnetic pulses. A nonmonotonic behavior of the breather-only generation probability is observed as a function of the noise intensity. An experimental protocol providing evidence of the Josephson breather's existence is proposed.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Stochastic 0-dimensional Biogeochemical Flux Model: Effect of temperature fluctuations on the dynamics of the biogeochemical properties in a marine ecosystem

We present a new stochastic model, based on a 0-dimensional version of the well known biogeochemical flux model (BFM), which allows to take into account the temperature random fluctuations present in natural systems and therefore to describe more realistically the dynamics of real marine ecosystems. The study presents a detailed analysis of the effects of randomly varying temperature on the lower trophic levels of the food web and ocean biogeochemical processes. More in detail, the temperature is described as a stochastic process driven by an additive self-correlated Gaussian noise. Varying both correlation time and intensity of the noise source, the predominance of different plankton populations is observed, with regimes shifted towards the coexistence or the exclusion of some populations. Finally a Fourier analysis carried out on the time series of the plankton populations shows how the ecosystem responds to the seasonal driving for different values of the noise intensity.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2021

Dressed emitters as impurities

Dressed states forming when quantum emitters or atoms couple to a photonic bath underpin a number of phenomena and applications, in particular dispersive effective interactions occurring within photonic bandgaps. Here, we present a compact formulation of the resolvent-based theory for calculating atom-photon dressed states built on the idea that the atom behaves as an effective impurity. This establishes an explicit connection with the standard impurity problem in condensed matter. Moreover, it allows us to formulate and settle in a model-independent context a number of properties previously known only for specific models or not entirely formalized. The framework is next extended to the case of more than one emitter, which is used to derive a general expression of dissipationless effective Hamiltonians explicitly featuring the overlap of single-emitter dressed bound states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Voltage drop across Josephson junctions for Lévy noise detection

We propose to characterize Lévy-distributed stochastic fluctuations through the measurement of the average voltage drop across a current-biased Josephson junction. We show that the noise induced switching process in the Josephson washboard potential can be exploited to reveal and characterize Lévy fluctuations, also if embedded in a thermal noisy background. The measurement of the average voltage drop as a function of the noise intensity allows to infer the value of the stability index that characterizes Lévy-distributed fluctuations. An analytical estimate of the average velocity in the case of a Lévy-driven escape process from a metastable state well agrees with the numerical calculation of the average voltage drop across the junction. The best performances are reached at small bias currents and low temperatures, \emph{i.e.}, when both thermally activated and quantum tunneling switching processes can be neglected. The effects discussed in this work pave the way toward an effective and reliable method to characterize Lévy components eventually present in an unknown noisy signal.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

On quantumness in multi-parameter quantum estimation

In this article we derive a measure of quantumness in quantum multi-parameter estimation problems. We can show that the ratio between the mean Uhlmann Curvature and the Fisher Information provides a figure of merit which estimates the amount of incompatibility arising from the quantum nature of the underlying physical system. This ratio accounts for the discrepancy between the attainable precision in the simultaneous estimation of multiple parameters and the precision predicted by the Cramér-Rao bound. As a testbed for this concept, we consider a quantum many-body system in thermal equilibrium, and explore the quantum compatibility of the model across its phase diagram.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Symmetric Logarithmic Derivative of Fermionic Gaussian States

In this article we derive a closed form expression for the symmetric logarithmic derivative of Fermionic Gaussian states. This provides a direct way of computing the quantum Fisher Information for Fermionic Gaussian states. Applications ranges from quantum Metrology with thermal states and non-equilibrium steady states with Fermionic many-body systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Geometry of quantum phase transitions

In this article we provide a review of geometrical methods employed in the analysis of quantum phase transitions and non-equilibrium dissipative phase transitions. After a pedagogical introduction to geometric phases and geometric information in the characterisation of quantum phase transitions, we describe recent developments of geometrical approaches based on mixed-state generalisation of the Berry-phase, i.e. the Uhlmann geometric phase, for the investigation of non-equilibrium steady-state quantum phase transitions (NESS-QPTs ). Equilibrium phase transitions fall invariably into two markedly non-overlapping categories: classical phase transitions and quantum phase transitions, whereas in NESS-QPTs this distinction may fade off. The approach described in this review, among other things, can quantitatively assess the quantum character of such critical phenomena. This framework is applied to a paradigmatic class of lattice Fermion systems with local reservoirs, characterised by Gaussian non-equilibrium steady states. The relations between the behaviour of the geometric phase curvature, the divergence of the correlation length, the character of the criticality and the gap - either Hamiltonian or dissipative - are reviewed.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Uhlmann number in translational invariant systems

We define the Uhlmann number as an extension of the Chern number, and we use this quantity to describe the topology of 2D translational invariant Fermionic systems at finite temperature. We consider two paradigmatic systems and we study the changes in their topology through the Uhlmann number. Through the linear response theory we linked two geometrical quantities of the system, the mean Uhlmann curvature and the Uhlmann number, to directly measurable physical quantities, i.e. the dynamical susceptibility and to the dynamical conductivity, respectively.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Haldane Model at finite temperature

We consider the Haldane model, a 2D topological insulator whose phase is defined by the Chern number. We study its phases as temperature varies by means of the Uhlmann number, a finite temperature generalization of the Chern number. Because of the relation between the Uhlmann number and the dynamical transverse conductivity of the system, we evaluate also the conductivity of the model. This analysis does not show any sign of a phase transition induced by the temperature, nonetheless it gives a better understanding of the fate of the topological phase with the increase of the temperature, and it provides another example of the usefulness of the Uhlmann number as a novel tool to study topological properties at finite temperature.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2019

On critical properties of Berry curvature in Kitaev honeycomb model

We analyse the Kitaev honeycomb model, by means of the Berry curvature with respect to Hamiltonian parameters. We concentrate on the ground-state vortex-free sector, which allows us to exploit an appropriate Fermionisation technique. The parameter space includes a time-reversal breaking term which provides an analytical headway to study the curvature in phases in which it would otherwise vanish. The curvature is then analysed in the limit in which the time-reversal-symmetry-breaking perturbation vanishes. This provides remarkable information about the topological phase transitions of the model. A non-critical behaviour is found in the Berry curvature itself, which shows a distinctive behaviour in the different phases. The analysis of the first derivative shows a critical behaviour around the transition point.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Josephson-based threshold detector for Lévy distributed fluctuations

We propose a threshold detector for Lévy distributed fluctuations based on a Josephson junction. The Lévy noise current added to a linearly ramped bias current results in clear changes in the distribution of switching currents out of the zero-voltage state of the junction. We observe that the analysis of the cumulative distribution function of the switching currents supplies information on both the characteristics shape parameter $α$ of the Lévy statistics and the intensity of the fluctuations. Moreover, we discuss a theoretical model which allows to extract characteristic features of the Lévy fluctuations from a measured distribution of switching currents. In view of this results, this system can effectively find an application as a detector for a Lévy signal embedded in a noisy background.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Finite temperature geometric properties of the Kitaev honeycomb model

We study finite temperature topological phase transitions of the Kitaev's spin honeycomb model in the vortex-free sector with the use of the recently introduced mean Uhlmann curvature. We employ an appropriate Fermionisation procedure to study the system as a two-band p-wave superconductor described by a BdG Hamiltonian. This allows to study relevant quantities such as Berry and mean Uhlmann curvatures in a simple setting. More specifically, we consider the spin honeycomb in the presence of an external magnetic field breaking time reversal symmetry. The introduction of such an external perturbation opens a gap in the phase of the system characterised by non-Abelian statistics, and makes the model to belong to a symmetry protected class, so that the Uhmann number can be analysed. We first consider the Berry curvature on a particular evolution line over the phase diagram. The mean Uhlmann curvature and the Uhlmann number are then analysed considering the system to be in a Gibbs state at finite temperature. Then, we show that the mean Uhlmann curvature describes a cross-over effect of the phases at high temperature. We also find an interesting nonmonotonic behaviour of the Uhlmann number as a function of the temperature in the trivial phase, which is due to the partial filling of the conduction band around Dirac points.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Uhlmann curvature in dissipative phase transitions

We study the mean Uhlmann curvature in fermionic systems undergoing a dissipative driven phase transition. We consider a paradigmatic class of lattice fermion systems in non-equilibrium steady-state of an open system with local reservoirs, which are characterised by a Gaussian fermionic steady state. In the thermodynamical limit, in systems with translational invariance we show that a singular behaviour of the Uhlmann curvature represents a sufficient criterion for criticalities, in the sense of diverging correlation length, and it is not otherwise sensitive to the closure of the Liouvillian dissipative gap. In finite size systems, we show that the scaling behaviour of the mean Uhlmann curvature maps faithfully the phase diagram, and a relation to the dissipative gap is put forward. We argue that the mean Uhlmann phase can shade light upon the nature of non equilibrium steady state criticality in particular with regard to the role played by quantum vs classical fluctuations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Dissipative dynamics in a quantum bistable system: Crossover from weak to strong damping

The dissipative dynamics of a quantum bistable system coupled to a Ohmic heat bath is investigated beyond the spin-boson approximation. Within the path-integral approach to quantum dissipation, we propose an approximation scheme which exploits the separation of time scales between intra- and interwell (tunneling) dynamics. The resulting generalized master equation for the populations in a space localized basis enables us to investigate a wide range of temperatures and system-environment coupling strengths. A phase diagram in the coupling-temperature space is provided to give a comprehensive account of the different dynamical regimes.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗