arXiv subjects

Houssam Abdul-Rahman

Publications and source records attributed to Houssam Abdul-Rahman.

17 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Bottleneck Effects and Harmonic-Type Velocity Bounds for Periodic Quantum Walks

We prove explicit upper bounds on the propagation velocity of one-dimensional quantum walks with periodic coins of arbitrary period. We treat two complementary settings. First, in a perturbative regime where one transmission parameter is small, we show that the corresponding almost reflecting coin acts as a bottleneck for transport: the velocity is bounded linearly in this parameter, with an explicit leading order estimate. Second, for arbitrary nonzero transmission parameters, we prove a general a priori bound in terms of their harmonic mean, together with a refined version that detects the spatial variation of neighboring coins. Moreover, we prove a general lower bound on the velocity. These bounds apply directly to the corresponding CMV setting.

math-ph↗

arXiv2026

Absence of Ballistic Transport in Quantum Walks with Asymptotically Reflecting Sites

We prove general sufficient conditions for zero velocity in position dependent one-dimensional quantum walks, and hence for the absence of ballistic transport. Our starting point is a general a priori upper bound on the velocity, formulated in terms of sparse bi-infinite sequences of sites, their gap structure, and the corresponding local coin parameters. This estimate yields several deterministic criteria for zero velocity that depend only on the behavior of suitable coin entries along selected subsequences and are independent of the values of the coins elsewhere. We also discuss the random case as an application of the general approach. All of our results remain valid in the CMV setting.

math-ph↗

arXiv2025

Exponential Suppression of Transport in Electric Quantum Walks

We establish exact scalings for the maximal group velocity of translation-invariant quantum walks in periodic electric fields. Our main result shows that the maximal group velocity decays exponentially with the period of the field in the whole parameter range, thus affirming a conjecture of arXiv:2302.01869 and at the same time augmenting it to an exact equality. We further demonstrate explicit revival relations and characterize the absolutely continuous spectrum in these models. Our results apply directly also to generalized CMV matrices.

math-ph↗

arXiv2025

Sharp Polynomial Velocity Decay Bounds for Multidimensional Periodic Schrödinger Operators

We investigate periodic Schrödinger operators in arbitrary dimensions in the large coupling regime. Our results establish that both the Lieb--Robinson velocity and the asymptotic velocity decay at an inverse polynomial rate in the coupling, with the precise exponent determined by the period of the underlying potential. In particular, we obtain sharp polynomial decay rates that capture the precise dependence on the periodic structure.

math-ph↗

arXiv2024

Entanglement bounds for single-excitation energy eigenstates of quantum oscillator systems

We provide an analytic method for estimating the entanglement of the non-gaussian energy eigenstates of disordered harmonic oscillator systems. We invoke the explicit formulas of the eigenstates of the oscillator systems to establish bounds for their $ε$-Rényi entanglement entropy $ε\in(0,1)$. Our methods result in a logarithmically corrected area law for the entanglement of eigenstates, corresponding to one excitation, of the disordered harmonic oscillator systems.

math-ph↗

arXiv2024

Slow propagation velocities in Schrödinger operators with large periodic potential

Schrödinger operators with periodic potential have generally been shown to exhibit ballistic transport. In this work, we investigate if the propagation velocity, while positive, can be made arbitrarily small by a suitable choice of the periodic potential. We consider the discrete one-dimensional Schrödinger operator $Δ+μV$, where $Δ$ is the discrete Laplacian, $V$ is a $p$-periodic non-degenerate potential, and $μ>0$. We establish a Lieb-Robinson-type bound with a group velocity that scales like $\mathcal{O}(1/μ)$ as $μ\rightarrow\infty$. This shows the existence of a linear light cone with a maximum velocity of quantum propagation that is decaying at a rate proportional to $1/μ$. Furthermore, we prove that the asymptotic velocity, or the average velocity of the time-evolved state, exhibits a decay proportional to $\mathcal{O}(1/μ^{p-1})$ as $μ\rightarrow\infty$.

math-ph↗

arXiv2023

Exponentially decaying velocity bounds of quantum walks in periodic fields

We consider a class of discrete-time one-dimensional quantum walks, associated with CMV unitary matrices, in the presence of a local field. This class is parametrized by a transmission parameter $t\in[0,1]$. We show that for a certain range for $t$, the corresponding asymptotic velocity can be made arbitrarily small by introducing a periodic local field with a sufficiently large period. In particular, we prove an upper bound for the velocity of the $n$-periodic quantum walk that is decaying exponentially in the period length $n$. Hence, localization-like effects are observed even after a long number of quantum walk steps when $n$ is large.

math-ph↗

arXiv2022

Dynamical Evolution of Entanglement in Disordered Oscillator Systems

We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of a disordered quantum system consisting of harmonic oscillators in a $d$-dimensional lattice. If the system is sufficiently localized, we show that, starting from a broad class of initial product states that are associated with a tiling (decomposition) of the $d$-dimensional lattice, the dynamical evolution of entanglement follows an area law in all times. Moreover, the entanglement bound reveals a dependency on how the subsystems are located within the lattice in dimensions $d\geq 2$. In particular, the entanglement grows with the maximum degree of the dual graph associated with the lattice tiling.

math-ph↗

arXiv2019

Entanglement bounds in the XXZ quantum spin chain

We consider the XXZ spin chain, characterized by an anisotropy parameter $Δ>1$, and normalized such that the ground state energy is $0$ and the ground state given by the all spins up state. The energies $E_K = K(1-1/Δ)$, $K=1,2,\ldots$, can be interpreted as $K$-cluster break-up thresholds for down spin configurations. We show that, for every $K$, the bipartite entanglement of all states with energy below the $(K+1)$-cluster break-up satisfies a logarithmically corrected (or enhanced) area law. This generalizes a result by Beaud and Warzel, who considered energies in the droplet spectrum (i.e., below the 2-cluster break-up). For general $K$, we find an upper logarithmic bound with pre-factor $2K-1$. We show that this constant is optimal in the Ising limit $Δ=\infty$. Beaud and Warzel also showed that after introducing a random field and disorder averaging the enhanced area law becomes a strict area law, again for states in the droplet regime. For the Ising limit with random field, we show that this result does not extend beyond the droplet regime. Instead, we find states with energies arbitrarily close to the $(K+1)$-cluster break-up whose entanglement satisfies a logarithmically growing lower bound with pre-factor $K-1$.

math-ph↗

arXiv2019

A class of two-dimensional AKLT models with a gap

The AKLT spin chain is the prototypical example of a frustration-free quantum spin system with a spectral gap above its ground state. Affleck, Kennedy, Lieb, and Tasaki also conjectured that the two-dimensional version of their model on the hexagonal lattice exhibits a spectral gap. In this paper, we introduce a family of variants of the two-dimensional AKLT model depending on a positive integer $n$, which is defined by decorating the edges of the hexagonal lattice with one-dimensional AKLT spin chains of length $n$. We prove that these decorated models are gapped for all $n \geq 3$.

math-ph↗

arXiv2018

On the Regime of Localized Excitations for Disordered Oscillator Systems

We study quantum oscillator lattice systems with disorder, in arbitrary dimension, requiring only partial localization of the associated effective one-particle Hamiltonian. This leads to a many-body localized regime of excited states with arbitrarily large energy density. We prove zero-velocity Lieb-Robinson bounds for the dynamics of Weyl operators as well as for position and momentum operators restricted to this regime. Dynamical localization is also shown in the form of quasi-locality of the time evolution of local Weyl operators and through exponential clustering of the dynamic correlations of states with localized excitations.

math-ph↗

arXiv2018

Entanglement of a class of non-Gaussian states in disordered harmonic oscillator systems

For disordered harmonic oscillator systems over the $d$-dimensional lattice, we consider the problem of finding the bipartite entanglement of the uniform ensemble of the energy eigenstates associated with a particular number of modes. Such ensemble define a class of mixed, non-Gaussian entangled states that are labeled, by the energy of the system, in an increasing order. We develop a novel approach to find the exact logarithmic negativity of this class of states. We also prove entanglement bounds and demonstrate that the low energy states follow an area law.

math-ph↗

arXiv2018

Correlations in disordered quantum harmonic oscillator systems: The effects of excitations and quantum quenches

We prove spatial decay estimates on disorder-averaged position-momentum correlations in a gapless class of random oscillator models. First, we prove a decay estimate on dynamic correlations for general eigenstates with a bound that depends on the magnitude of the maximally excited mode. Then, we consider the situation of a quantum quench. We prove that the full time-evolution of an initially chosen (uncorrelated) product state has disorder-averaged correlations which decay exponentially in space, uniformly in time.

math-ph↗

arXiv2017

Localization Properties of the XY Spin Chain. A review of mathematical results with an eye toward Many-Body Localization

We review several aspects of Many-Body Localization-like properties exhibited by the disordered XY chains: localization properties of the energy eigenstates and thermal states, propagation bounds of Lieb-Robinson type, decay of correlation functions, absence of particle transport, bounds on the bipartite entanglement, and bounded entanglement growth under the dynamics. We also prove new results on the absence of energy transport and Fock space localization. All these properties are made accessible to mathematical analysis due to the exact mapping of the XY chain to a system of quasi-free fermions given by the Jordan-Wigner transformation. Motivated by these results we discuss conjectured properties of more general disordered quantum spin and other systems as possible directions for future mathematical research.

math-ph↗

arXiv2016

Entanglement Dynamics of Disordered Quantum XY Chains

We consider the dynamics of the quantum XY chain with disorder under the general assumption that the expectation of the eigenfunction correlator of the associated one-particle Hamiltonian satisfies a decay estimate typical of Anderson localization. We show that, starting from a broad class of product initial states, entanglement remains bounded for all times. For the XX chain, we also derive bounds on the particle transport which, in particular, show that the density profile of initial states that consist of fully occupied and empty intervals, only have significant dynamics near the edges of those intervals, uniformly for all times.

math-ph↗

arXiv2015

A uniform area law for the entanglement of eigenstates in the disordered XY chain

We consider the isotropic or anisotropic XY spin chain in the presence of a transversal random magnetic field, with parameters given by random variables. It is shown that eigenfunction correlator localization of the corresponding effective one-particle Hamiltonian implies a uniform area law bound in expectation for the bipartite entanglement entropy of all eigenstates of the XY chain, i.e. a form of many-body localization at all energies. Here entanglement with respect to arbitrary connected subchains of the chain can be considered. Applications where the required eigenfunction correlator bounds are known include the isotropic XY chain in random field as well as the anisotropic chain in strong or strongly disordered random field.

math-ph↗

arXiv2015

Fast and numerically stable circle fit

We develop a new algorithm for fitting circles that does not have drawbacks commonly found in existing circle fits. Our fit achieves ultimate accuracy (to machine precision), avoids divergence, and is numerically stable even when fitting circles get arbitrary large. Lastly, our algorithm takes less than 10 iterations to converge, on average.

cs.CV↗