arXiv subjects

Janez Bonča

Publications and source records attributed to Janez Bonča.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Universal thermal breakdown of polaron coherence in one, two, and three dimensions

How a polaron loses its quasiparticle coherence with increasing temperature is a long-standing open problem. Holstein addressed it in 1959 only in the extreme antiadiabatic, strong-coupling limit, while more recent numerically exact approaches are largely restricted to one dimension. Here we solve this problem on square and simple cubic lattices across the weak-, intermediate-, and strong-coupling regimes. We show that the polaron effective mass $m^*$ and inverse lifetime $1/τ$ increase monotonically with temperature until, at $T \sim 0.5\,Ω$, the quasiparticle peak dissolves into a broad incoherent thermal continuum. The phonon frequency $Ω$ therefore defines a universal coherence scale, independent of dimensionality and coupling strength, validating Holstein's prediction far beyond the regime in which it was derived. These results follow from a finite-temperature generalization of the Momentum Average (MA) approximation, yielding a closed-form, diagrammatically derived self-energy that is asymptotically exact in the strong-coupling limit at all temperatures. Benchmark comparisons demonstrate excellent quantitative agreement of the resulting 1D spectral functions with the numerically exact Variational Exact Diagonalization-Finite-Temperature Lanczos Method (VED-FTLM) and finite-$T$ Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG).

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2026

Fingerprints of preformed pairs in two-electron angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy

We use variational exact diagonalization (VED) to calculate the two-electron removal spectral weight for the Hubbard-Holstein model, starting from the ground-state with two electrons on a one-dimensional chain. We argue that this spectral weight provides a valuable proxy for the intensity of 2eARPES processes. Our results show that when contrasted to the presumably larger signal due to two electrons ejected from two different pairs, the presumably weaker signal due to two electrons ejected from the same pair (i) is segregated in energy, appearing at a lower binding energy, and (ii) has a very characteristic momentum dependence, with a different symmetry than that of the signal corresponding to two electrons emitted from two different pairs. We verify that these fingerprints appear for pairs with different symmetries, and prove that they arise as a direct consequence of momentum and energy conservation, therefore they are generic for any model with electron-boson coupling that can lead to formation of electron pairs. Experimental observation of these fingerprints will confirm the existence of pairs. Moreover, the momentum dependence map allows one to distinguish whether the pairs are coherent (superconducting) or not. Finally, we argue that these considerations generalize to finite but low electron concentrations, finite temperatures and higher dimensions.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Tunable Hilbert space fragmentation and extended critical regime

Systems exhibiting the Hilbert-space fragmentation are nonergodic, and their Hamiltonians decompose into exponentially many blocks in the computational basis. In many cases, these blocks can be labeled by eigenvalues of statistically localized integrals of motion (SLIOM), which play a similar role in fragmented systems as local integrals of motion in integrable systems. While a nonzero perturbation eliminates all nontrivial conserved quantities from integrable models, we demonstrate for the $t$-$J_z$ chain that an appropriately chosen perturbation may gradually eliminate SLIOMs (one by one) by progressively merging the fragmented subspaces. This gradual recovery of ergodicity manifests as an extended critical regime characterized by multiple peaks of the fidelity susceptibility. Each peak signals a change in the number of SLIOMs and blocks, as well as an ultra-slow relaxation of local observables.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Signature of preformed pairs in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy

We use density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and variational exact diagonalization (VED) to calculate the single-electron removal spectral weight for the Hubbard-Holstein model at low electron densities. Tuning the strength of the electron-phonon coupling and of the Hubbard repulsion allows us to contrast the results for a liquid of polarons versus a liquid of bipolarons. The former shows spectral weight up to the Fermi energy, as expected for a metal. The latter has a gap in its spectral weight, set by the bipolaron binding energy, although this is also a (strongly correlated) metal. This difference suggests that angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy could be used to identify liquids of pre-formed pairs. Furthermore, we show that the one-dimensional liquid of incoherent bipolarons is well approximated by a "Bose sea" of bosons that are hard-core in momentum space, occupying the momenta inside the Fermi sea but otherwise non-interacting. This new proposal for a strongly-correlated many-body wavefunction opens the way for studying various other properties of incoherent (non-superconducting) liquids of pre-formed pairs in any dimension.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2023

Modelling sample-to-sample fluctuations of the gap ratio in finite disordered spin chains

We study sample-to-sample fluctuations of the gap ratio in the energy spectra in finite disordered spin chains. The chains are described by the random-field Ising model and the Heisenberg model. We show that away from the ergodic/nonergodic crossover, the fluctuations are correctly captured by the Rosenzweig-Porter (RP) model. However, fluctuations in the microscopic models significantly exceed those in the RP model in the vicinity of the crossover. We show that upon introducing an extension to the RP model, one correctly reproduces the fluctuations in all regimes, i.e., in the ergodic and nonergodic regimes as well as at the crossover between them. Finally, we demonstrate how to reduce the sample-to-sample fluctuations in both studied microscopic models.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2022

Finite-temperature optical conductivity with density-matrix renormalization group methods for the Holstein polaron and bipolaron with dispersive phonons

A comprehensive picture of polaron and bipolaron physics is essential to understand the optical absorption spectrum in many materials with electron-phonon interactions. In particular, the finite-temperature properties are of interest since they play an important role in many experiments. Here, we combine the parallel two-site time-dependent variational principle algorithm (p2TDVP) with local basis optimization (LBO) and purification to calculate time-dependent current-current correlation functions. From this information, we extract the optical conductivity for the Holstein polaron and bipolaron with dispersive phonons at finite temperatures. For the polaron in the weak and intermediate electron-phonon coupling regimes, we analyze the influence of phonon dispersion relations on the spectra. For strong electron-phonon coupling, the known result of an asymmetric Gaussian is reproduced for a flat phonon band. For a finite phonon bandwidth, the center of the Gaussian is either shifted to larger or smaller frequencies, depending on the sign of the phonon hopping. We illustrate that this can be well understood by considering the Born-Oppenheimer surfaces. A similar behavior is seen for the bipolaron for strong coupling. For the bipolaron with weak and intermediate coupling strengths and a flat phonon band, we obtain two very different spectra. The latter also has a temperature-dependent resonance at a frequency below the phonon frequency.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Long-lived non-thermal states in pumped one-dimensional systems of hard-core bosons

We study a unitary time evolution of a symmetry-broken state in a form of a charge density wave in a finite system of interacting hard-core bosons, which can be mapped onto the XXZ Heisenberg chain. Moreover, we introduce a spatially-homogenous and time-dependent vector potential that mimics a short laser pulse. We establish the range of amplitudes of the vector potential for which the onset of charge density wave order can be controlled. We propose a protocol that reveals non-thermal long-lived states, which are characterized by a non-zero charge density wave order translated by one lattice site with respect to its initial formation. The life times of these states are large in comparison to all typical times given by the parameters of the system. They increase with the number of lattice sites, but are significantly suppressed by the integrablility breaking perturbations. In view of these findings, we speculate that the long-lived non-thermal states exist in the thermodynamic limit.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Finite-temperature density-matrix renormalization group method for electron-phonon systems: Thermodynamics and Holstein-polaron spectral functions

We investigate the thermodynamics and finite-temperature spectral functions of the Holstein polaron using a density-matrix renormalization group method. Our method combines purification and local basis optimization (LBO) as an efficient treatment of phonon modes. LBO is a scheme which relies on finding the optimal local basis by diagonalizing the local reduced density matrix. By transforming the state into this basis, one can truncate the local Hilbert space with a negligible loss of accuracy for a wide range of parameters. In this work, we focus on the crossover regime between large and small polarons of the Holstein model. Here, no analytical solution exists and we show that the thermal expectation values at low temperatures are independent of the phonon Hilbert space truncation provided the basis is chosen large enough. We then demonstrate that we can extract the electron spectral function and establish consistency with results from a finite-temperature Lanczos method. We additionally calculate the electron emission spectrum and the phonon spectral function and show that all the computations are significantly simplified by the local basis optimization. We observe that the electron emission spectrum shifts spectral weight to both lower frequencies and larger momenta as the temperature is increased. The phonon spectral function experiences a large broadening and the polaron peak at large momenta gets significantly flattened and merges almost completely into the free-phonon peak.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Ergodicity Breaking Transition in Finite Disordered Spin Chains

We study disorder-induced ergodicity breaking transition in high-energy eigenstates of interacting spin-1/2 chains. Using exact diagonalization we introduce a cost function approach to quantitatively compare different scenarios for the eigenstate transition. We study ergodicity indicators such as the eigenstate entanglement entropy and the spectral level spacing ratio, and we consistently find that an (infinite-order) Kosterlitz-Thouless transition yields a lower cost function when compared to a finite-order transition. Interestingly, we observe that the transition point in finite systems exhibits nearly thermal properties, i.e., ergodicity indicators at the transition are close to the random matrix theory predictions.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2017

Optical response of highly excited particles in a strongly correlated system

We present a linear-response formalism for a system of correlated electrons out of equilibrium, as relevant for the probe optical absorption in pump-probe experiments. We consider the time dependent optical conductivity $σ(ω,t)$ and its nonequilibrium properties. As an application we numerically study a single highly excited charged particle in the spin background, as described within the two-dimensional $t$-$J$ model. Our results show that the optical sum rule approaches the equilibrium-like one very fast, however, the time evolution and the final asymptotic behavior of the absorption spectra in the finite systems considered still reveal dependence on the type of initial pump perturbation. This is observed in the evolution of its main features: the mid-infrared peak and the Drude weight.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2016

Nature of Bosonic Excitations revealed by high-energy charge carriers

We address a long standing problem concerning the origin of bosonic excitations that strongly interact with charge carriers. We show that the time-resolved pump-probe experiments are capable to distinguish between regular bosonic degrees of freedom, e.g. phonons, and the hard-core bosons, e.g., magnons. The ability of phonon degrees of freedom to absorb essentially unlimited amount of energy renders relaxation dynamics nearly independent on the absorbed energy or the fluence. In contrast, the hard core effects pose limits on the density of energy stored in the bosonic subsystems resulting in a substantial dependence of the relaxation time on the fluence and/or excitation energy. Very similar effects can be observed also in a different setup when the system is driven by multiple pulses of equal energy.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2015

Photoinduced in-gap excitations in the one-dimensional extended Hubbard model

We investigate the time evolution of optical conductivity in the half-filled one-dimensional extended Hubbard model driven by a transient laser pulse, by using the time-dependent Lanczos method. Photoinduced in-gap excitations exhibit a qualitatively different structure in the spin-density wave (SDW) in comparison to the charge-density-wave (CDW) phase. In the SDW, the origin of a low-energy in-gap excitation is attributed to the even-odd parity of the photoexcited states, while in the CDW an in-gap state is due to confined photogenerated carriers. The signature of the in-gap excitations can be identified as a characteristic oscillation in the time evolution of physical quantities.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Photoinduced spin-order destructions in one-dimensional extended Hubbard model

By employing the time-dependent Lanczos method, the nonequilibrium process of the half-filled one-dimensional extended Hubbard model under the irradiation of a transient laser pulse is investigated. We show that in the spin-density-wave (SDW) phase, the antiferromagnetic spin correlations are impaired by the photoinduced charge carriers. Near the phase boundary between the SDW and charge-density-wave (CDW) phases, a local enhancement of charge (spin) order that is absent in the original SDW (CDW) phase can be realized with proper laser frequency and strength. The possibility of restoration of spin orders from the CDW phase by optical means is discussed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Enhanced charge order in a photoexcited one-dimensional strongly correlated system

We present a compelling response of a low-dimensional strongly correlated system to an external perturbation. Using the time-dependent Lanczos method we investigate a nonequilibrium evolution of the half-filled one-dimensional extended Hubbard model, driven by a transient laser pulse. When the system is close to the phase boundary, by tuning the laser frequency and strength, a sustainable charge order enhancement is found that is absent in the Mott insulating phase. We analyze the conditions and investigate possible mechanisms of emerging charge order enhancement. Feasible experimental realizations are proposed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Relaxation dynamics of the Holstein polaron

Keeping the full quantum nature of the problem we compute the relaxation time of the Holstein polaron after it was driven far from the equilibrium by a strong oscillatory pulse. Just after the pulse the polaron's kinetic energy increases and subsequently exhibits relaxation type decrease with simultaneous emission of phonons. In the weak coupling regime partial tunneling of the electron from the polaron self-potential is observed. The inverse relaxation time is for small values of electron-phonon coupling $λ$ linear with $λ$, while it deviates downwards from the linear regime at $λ\gtrsim 0.1/ω_0$. The imaginary part of the equilibrium self energy shows good agreement with the inverse relaxation time obtained from nonequilibrium simulations.

cond-mat.str-el↗