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Gian Luca Giorgi

Publications and source records attributed to Gian Luca Giorgi.

81 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

Spontaneous PT symmetry breaking and quantum phase transitions in dimerized spin chains

The occurrence of parity-time reversal ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetry breaking is discussed in a non-Hermitian spin chain. The Hermiticity of the model is broken by the presence of an alternating, imaginary, transverse magnetic field. A full real spectrum, which occurs if and only if all the eigenvectors are $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetric, can appear only in presence of dimerization, i.e. only if the hopping amplitudes between nearest-neighbor spins assume alternate values along the chain. In order to make a connection between such system and the Hermitian world, we study the critical magnetic properties of the model and look for the conditions that would allow to observe the same phase diagram in the absence of the imaginary field. Such procedure amounts to renormalizing the spin-spin coupling amplitudes.

quant-ph↗

Ion-trap simulation of the quantum phase transition in an exactly solvable model of spins coupled to bosons

It is known that arrays of trapped ions can be used to efficiently simulate a variety of many-body quantum systems. Here, we show how it is possible to build a model representing a spin chain interacting with bosons which is exactly solvable. The exact spectrum of the model at zero temperature and the ground state properties are studied. We show that a quantum phase transition occurs when the coupling between spins and bosons reaches a critical value, which corresponds to a level crossing in the energy spectrum. Once the critical point is reached, the number of bosonic excitations in the ground state, which can be assumed as an order parameter, starts to be different from zero. The population of the bosonic mode is accompanied by a macroscopic magnetization of the spins. This double effect could represent an useful resource for the phase transition detection since a measure on the phonon can give information about the phase of the spin system. A finite temperature phase diagram is also given in the adiabatic regime.

quant-ph↗

Entanglement dynamics in presence of diversity under decohering environments

We study the evolution of entanglement of a pair of coupled, non-resonant harmonic oscillators in contact with an environment. For both the cases of a common bath and of two separate baths for each of the oscillators, a full master equation is provided without rotating wave approximation. This allows us to characterize the entanglement dynamics as a function of the diversity between the oscillators frequencies and their mutual coupling. Also the correlation between the occupation numbers is considered to explore the degree of quantumness of the system. The singular effect of the resonance condition (identical oscillators) and its relationship with the possibility of preserving asymptotic entanglement are discussed. The importance of the bath's memory properties is investigated by comparing Markovian and non-Markovian evolutions.

quant-ph↗

Ground-state factorization and quantum phase transition in dimerized spin chains

We study the occurrence of ground-state factorization in dimerized $XY$ spin chains in a transverse field. Together with the usual ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic regimes, a third case emerges, with no analogous in translationally-invariant systems, consisting of an antiferromagnetic Neél-type ground state where pairs of spins represent the unitary cell. Then, we calculate the exact solution of the model and show that the factorizing field represent an accidental degeneracy point of the Hamiltonian. Finally, we extend the study of the existence of ground-state factorization to a more general class of models.

cond-mat.other↗

Entanglement, BEC, and superfluid-like behavior of two-mode photon systems

A system of two interacting photon modes, without constraints on the photon number, in the presence of a Kerr nonlinearity, exhibits BEC if the transfer amplitude is greater than the mode frequency. A symmetry-breaking field (SBF) can be introduced by taking into account a classical electron current. The ground state, in the limit of small nonlinearity, becomes a squeezed state, and thus the modes become entangled. The smaller is the SBF, the greater is entanglement. Superfluid-like behavior is observed in the study of entanglement growth from an initial coherent state, since in the short-time range the growth does not depend on the SBF amplitude, and on the initial state amplitude. On the other hand, the latter is the only parameter which determines entanglement in the absence of the SBF.

quant-ph↗

Two-spin entanglement induced by electron scattering in nanostructures

We present a model where two magnetic impurities in a discrete tight-binding ring become entangled because of scattering processes associated to the injection of a conduction electron. We introduce a weak coupling approximation that allows us to solve the problem in a analytical way and compare the theory with the exact numerical results. We obtain the generation of entanglement both in a deterministic way and in a probabilistic one. The first case is intrinsically related to the structure of the two-impurity reduced density matrix, while the second one occurs when a projection on the electron state is performed.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Quantum Key Distribution with vacuum--one-photon entangled states

We present a scheme to realize a quantum key distribution using vacuum-one photon entangled states created both from Alice and Bob. The protocol consists in an exchange of spatial modes between Alice and Bob and in a recombination which allows one of them to reconstruct the bit encoded by the counterpart in the phase of the entangled state. The security of the scheme is analyzed against some simple kind of attack. The model is shown to reach higher efficiency with respect to prior schemes using phase encoding methods.

quant-ph↗

Conditional sign flip via teleportation

We present a model to realize a probabilistic conditional sign flip gate using only linear optics. The gate operates in the space of number state qubits and is obtained by a nonconventional use of the teleportation protocol. Both a destructive and a nondestructive version of the gate are presented. In the former case an Hadamard gate on the control qubit is combined with a projective teleportation scheme mixing control and target. The success probability is 1/2. In the latter case we need a quantum encoder realized via the interaction of the control qubit with an ancillary state composed of two maximally entangled photons. The success probability is 1/4.

quant-ph↗