arXiv subjects

Federica Maria Surace

Publications and source records attributed to Federica Maria Surace.

28 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

False vacuum decay in quantum spin chains

The false vacuum decay has been a central theme in physics for half a century with applications to cosmology and to the theory of fundamental interactions. This fascinating phenomenon is even more intriguing when combined with the confinement of elementary particles. Due to the astronomical time scales involved, the research has so far focused on theoretical aspects of this decay. The purpose of this Letter is to show that the false vacuum decay is accessible to current optical experiments as quantum analog simulators of spin chains with confinement of the elementary excitations, which mimic the high energy phenomenology but in one spatial dimension. We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of the false vacuum in a quantum Ising chain and in an XXZ ladder. The false vacuum is the metastable state that arises in the ferromagnetic phase of the model when the symmetry is explicitly broken by a longitudinal field. This state decays through the formation of "bubbles" of true vacuum. Using iTEBD simulations, we are able to study the real-time evolution in the thermodynamic limit and measure the decay rate of local observables. We find that the numerical results agree with the theoretical prediction that the decay rate is exponentially small in the inverse of the longitudinal field.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2021

Scattering of mesons in quantum simulators

Simulating real-time evolution in theories of fundamental interactions represents one of the central challenges in contemporary theoretical physics. Cold-atom platforms stand as promising candidates to realize quantum simulations of non-perturbative phenomena in gauge theories, such as vacuum decay and hadron collisions, in prohibitive conditions for direct experiments. In this work, we demonstrate that present-day quantum simulators can imitate linear particle accelerators, giving access to S-matrix measurements of elastic and inelastic meson collisions in low-dimensional Abelian gauge theories. Considering for definiteness a $(1+1)$-dimensional $\mathbb{Z}_2$-lattice gauge theory realizable with Rydberg-atom arrays, we present protocols to observe and measure selected meson-meson scattering processes. We provide a benchmark theoretical study of scattering amplitudes in the regime of large fermion mass, including an exact solution valid for arbitrary coupling strength. This allows us to discuss the occurrence of inelastic scattering channels, featuring the production of new mesons with different internal structures. We present numerical simulations of realistic wavepacket collisions, which reproduce the predicted cross section peaks. This work highlights the potential of quantum simulations to give unprecedented access to real-time scattering dynamics.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2021

Exact many-body scars and their stability in constrained quantum chains

Quantum scars are non-thermal eigenstates characterized by low entanglement entropy, initially detected in systems subject to nearest-neighbor Rydberg blockade, the so called PXP model. While most of these special eigenstates elude an analytical description and seem to hybridize with nearby thermal eigenstates for large systems, some of them can be written as matrix product states (MPS) with size-independent bond dimension. We study the response of these exact quantum scars to perturbations by analysing the scaling of the fidelity susceptibility with system size. We find that some of them are anomalously stable at first order in perturbation theory, in sharp contrast to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. However, this stability seems to breakdown when all orders are taken into account. We further investigate models with larger blockade radius and find a novel set of exact quantum scars, that we write down analytically and compare with the PXP exact eigenstates. We show that they exhibit the same robustness against perturbations at first order.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2021

Quasilocalized dynamics from confinement of quantum excitations

Confinement of excitations induces quasilocalized dynamics in disorder-free isolated quantum many-body systems in one spatial dimension. This occurrence is signalled by severe suppression of quantum correlation spreading and of entanglement growth, long-time persistence of spatial inhomogeneities, and long-lived coherent oscillations of local observables. In this work, we present a unified understanding of these dramatic effects. The slow dynamical behavior is shown to be related to the Schwinger effect in quantum electrodynamics. We demonstrate that it is quantitatively captured for long time scales by effective Hamiltonians exhibiting Stark localization of excitations and weak growth of the entanglement entropy for arbitrary coupling strength. This analysis explains the phenomenology of real-time string dynamics investigated in a number of lattice gauge theories, as well as the anomalous dynamics observed in quantum Ising chains after quenches. Our findings establish confinement as a robust mechanism for hindering the approach to equilibrium in translationally-invariant quantum statistical systems with local interactions.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2020

Weak-ergodicity-breaking via lattice supersymmetry

We study the spectral properties of $D$-dimensional $N=2$ supersymmetric lattice models. We find systematic departures from the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) in the form of a degenerate set of ETH-violating supersymmetric (SUSY) doublets, also referred to as many-body scars, that we construct analytically. These states are stable against arbitrary SUSY-preserving perturbations, including inhomogeneous couplings. For the specific case of two-leg ladders, we provide extensive numerical evidence that shows how those states are the only ones violating the ETH, and discuss their robustness to SUSY-violating perturbations. Our work suggests a generic mechanism to stabilize quantum many-body scars in lattice models in arbitrary dimensions.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2020

Quantum clock models with infinite-range interactions

We study the phase diagram, both at zero and finite temperature, in a class of $\mathbb{Z}_q$ models with infinite range interactions. We are able to identify the transitions between a symmetry-breaking and a trivial phase by using a mean-field approach and a perturbative expansion. We perform our analysis on a Hamiltonian with $2p$-body interactions and we find first-order transitions for any $p>1$; in the case $p=1$, the transitions are first-order for $q=3$ and second-order otherwise. In the infinite-range case there is no trace of gapless incommensurate phase but, when the transverse field is maximally chiral, the model is in a symmetry-breaking phase for arbitrarily large fields. We analytically study the transtion in the limit of infinite $q$, where the model possesses a continuous $U(1)$ symmetry.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2020

Confinement in the spectrum of a Heisenberg-Ising spin ladder

The Heisenberg-Ising spin ladder is one of the few short-range models showing confinement of elementary excitations without the need of an external field, neither transverse nor longitudinal. This feature makes the model suitable for an experimental realization with ultracold atoms. In this paper, we combine analytic and numerical techniques to precisely characterize its spectrum in the regime of Hamiltonian parameters showing confinement. We find two kinds of particles, which we dub intrachain and interchain mesons, that correspond to bound states of kinks within the same chain or between different ones, respectively. The ultimate physical reasons leading to the existence of two families of mesons is a residual double degeneracy of the ground state: the two types of mesons interpolate either between the same vacuum (intrachain) or between the two different ones (interchain). While the intrachain mesons can also be qualitatively assessed through an effective mean field description and were previously known, the interchain ones are new and they represent general features of spin ladders with confinement.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2020

Homogeneous Floquet time crystal protected by gauge invariance

We show that homogeneous lattice gauge theories can realize nonequilibrium quantum phases with long-range spatiotemporal order protected by gauge invariance instead of disorder. We study a kicked $\mathbb{Z}_2$-Higgs gauge theory and find that it breaks the discrete temporal symmetry by a period doubling. In a limit solvable by Jordan-Wigner analysis we extensively study the time-crystal properties for large systems and further find that the spatiotemporal order is robust under the addition of a solvability-breaking perturbation preserving the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge symmetry. The protecting mechanism for the nonequilibrium order relies on the Hilbert space structure of lattice gauge theories, so that our results can be directly extended to other models with discrete gauge symmetries.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Breakdown of ergodicity in disordered U(1) lattice gauge theories

We show how U(1) lattice gauge theories display key signatures of ergodicity breaking in the presence of a random charge background. Contrary to the widely studied case of spin models, in the presence of Coulomb interactions, the spectral properties of such lattice gauge theories are very weakly affected by finite-volume effects. This allows to draw a sharp boundary for the ergodic regime, and thus the breakdown of quantum chaos for sufficiently strong gauge couplings, at the system sizes accessible via exact diagonalization. Our conclusions are independent on the value of a background topological angle, and are contrasted with a gauge theory with truncated Hilbert space, where instead we observe very strong finite-volume effects akin to those observed in spin chains.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Floquet time crystals in clock models

We construct a class of period-$n$-tupling discrete time crystals based on $\mathbb{Z}_n$ clock variables, for all the integers $n$. We consider two classes of systems where this phenomenology occurs, disordered models with short-range interactions and fully connected models. In the case of short-range models we provide a complete classification of time-crystal phases for generic $n$. For the specific cases of $n=3$ and $n=4$ we study in details the dynamics by means of exact diagonalisation. In both cases, through an extensive analysis of the Floquet spectrum, we are able to fully map the phase diagram. In the case of infinite-range models, the mapping onto an effective bosonic Hamiltonian allows us to investigate the scaling to the thermodynamic limit. After a general discussion of the problem, we focus on $n=3$ and $n=4$, representative examples of the generic behaviour. Remarkably, for $n=4$ we find clear evidence of a new crystal-to-crystal transition between period $n$-tupling and period $n/2$-tupling.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗