arXiv subjects

Javier Rodriguez-Laguna

Publications and source records attributed to Javier Rodriguez-Laguna.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2019

Power Accretion in Social Systems

We consider a model of power distribution in a social system where a set of agents play a simple game on a graph: the probability of winning each round is proportional to the agent's current power, and the winner gets more power as a result. We show that, when the agents are distributed on simple 1D and 2D networks, inequality grows naturally up to a certain stationary value characterized by a clear division between a higher and a lower class of agents. High class agents are separated by one or several lower class agents which serve as a geometrical barrier preventing further flow of power between them. Moreover, we consider the effect of redistributive mechanisms, such as proportional (non-progressive) taxation. Sufficient taxation will induce a sharp transition towards a more equal society, and we argue that the critical taxation level is uniquely determined by the system geometry. Interestingly, we find that the roughness and Shannon entropy of the power distributions are a very useful complement to the standard measures of inequality, such as the Gini index and the Lorenz curve.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2018

Unusual area-law violation in random inhomogeneous systems

The discovery of novel entanglement patterns in quantum many-body systems is a prominent research direction in contemporary physics. Here we provide the example of a spin chain with random and inhomogeneous couplings that in the ground state exhibits a very unusual area law violation. In the clean limit, i.e., without disorder, the model is the rainbow chain and has volume law entanglement. We show that, in the presence of disorder, the entanglement entropy exhibits a power-law growth with the subsystem size, with an exponent 1/2. By employing the Strong Disorder Renormalization Group (SDRG) framework, we show that this exponent is related to the survival probability of certain random walks. The ground state of the model exhibits extended regions of short-range singlets (that we term ``bubble'' regions) as well as rare long range singlet (``rainbow'' regions). Crucially, while the probability of extended rainbow regions decays exponentially with their size, that of the bubble regions is power law. We provide strong numerical evidence for the correctness of SDRG results by exploiting the free-fermion solution of the model. Finally, we investigate the role of interactions by considering the random inhomogeneous XXZ spin chain. Within the SDRG framework and in the strong inhomogeneous limit, we show that the above area-law violation takes place only at the free-fermion point of phase diagram. This point divides two extended regions, which exhibit volume-law and area-law entanglement, respectively.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Local Quantum Thermometry using Unruh-De Witt detectors

We propose an operational definition for the local temperature of a quantum field employing Unruh-DeWitt detectors, as used in the study of the Unruh and Hawking effects. With this definition, an inhomogeneous quantum system in equilibrium can have different local temperatures, in analogy with the Tolman-Ehrenfest theorem from general relativity. We study the local temperature distribution on the ground state of hopping fermionic systems on a curved background. The observed temperature tends to zero as the thermometer-system coupling $g$ vanishes. Yet, for small but finite values of $g$, we show that the product of the observed local temperature and the logarithm of the local speed of light is approximately constant. Our predictions should be testable on ultracold atomic systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Synthetic Unruh effect in cold atoms

We propose to simulate a Dirac field near an event horizon using ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. Such a quantum simulator allows for the observation of the celebrated Unruh effect. Our proposal involves three stages: (1) preparation of the ground state of a massless 2D Dirac field in Minkowski spacetime; (2) quench of the optical lattice setup to simulate how an accelerated observer would view that state; (3) measurement of the local quantum fluctuation spectra by one-particle excitation spectroscopy in order to simulate a De Witt detector. According to Unruh's prediction, fluctuations measured in such a way must be thermal. Moreover, following Takagi's inversion theorem, they will obey the Bose-Einstein distribution, which will smoothly transform into the Fermi-Dirac as one of the dimensions of the lattice is reduced.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

Topology and the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class

We study the role of the topology of the background space on the one-dimensional Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class. To do so, we study the growth of balls on disordered 2D manifolds with random Riemannian metrics, generated by introducing random perturbations to a base manifold. As base manifolds we consider cones of different aperture angles $θ$, including the limiting cases of a cylinder ($θ=0$, which corresponds to an interface with periodic boundary conditions) and a plane ($θ=π/2$, which corresponds to an interface with circular geometry). We obtain that in the former case the radial fluctuations of the ball boundaries follow the Tracy-Widom (TW) distribution of the largest eigenvalue of random matrices in the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (TW-GOE), while on cones with any aperture angle $θ\neq 0$ fluctuations correspond to the TW-GUE distribution related with the Gaussian unitary ensemble. We provide a topological argument to justify the relevance of TW-GUE statistics for cones, and state a conjecture which relates the KPZ universality subclass with the background topology.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2015

Random geometry and the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class

We consider a model of a quenched disordered geometry in which a random metric is defined on ${\mathbb R}^2$, which is flat on average and presents short-range correlations. We focus on the statistical properties of balls and geodesics, i.e., circles and straight lines. We show numerically that the roughness of a ball of radius $R$ scales as $R^χ$, with a fluctuation exponent $χ\simeq 1/3$, while the lateral spread of the minimizing geodesic between two points at a distance $L$ grows as $L^ξ$, with wandering exponent value $ξ\simeq 2/3$. Results on related first-passage percolation (FPP) problems lead us to postulate that the statistics of balls in these random metrics belong to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class of surface kinetic roughening, with $ξ$ and $χ$ relating to critical exponents characterizing a corresponding interface growth process. Moreover, we check that the one-point and two-point correlators converge to the behavior expected for the Airy-2 process characterized by the Tracy-Widom (TW) probability distribution function of the largest eigenvalue of large random matrices in the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE). Nevertheless extreme-value statistics of ball coordinates are given by the TW distribution associated with random matrices in the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble. Furthermore, we also find TW-GUE statistics with good accuracy in arrival times.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2014

Splitting a critical spin chain

We study a quench protocol that conserves the entanglement spectrum of a bipartition of a quantum system. As an example we consider the splitting of a critical Ising chain in two chains, and compare it with the well known case of joining of two chains. We show that both the out of equilibrium time evolution of global properties and the equilibrium regime after the quench of local properties are different in the two scenarios. Since the two quenches only differ in the presence/absence of the conservation of the entanglement spectrum, our results suggest that this conservation plays a fundamental role in both the out-of-equilibrium dynamics and the subsequent equilibration mechanism. We discuss the relevance of our results in the context of quantum simulators.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2014

Physical consequences of P$\neq$NP and the DMRG-annealing conjecture

Computational complexity theory contains a corpus of theorems and conjectures regarding the time a Turing machine will need to solve certain types of problems as a function of the input size. Nature {\em need not} be a Turing machine and, thus, these theorems do not apply directly to it. But {\em classical simulations} of physical processes are programs running on Turing machines and, as such, are subject to them. In this work, computational complexity theory is applied to classical simulations of systems performing an adiabatic quantum computation (AQC), based on an annealed extension of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). We conjecture that the computational time required for those classical simulations is controlled solely by the {\em maximal entanglement} found during the process. Thus, lower bounds on the growth of entanglement with the system size can be provided. In some cases, quantum phase transitions can be predicted to take place in certain inhomogeneous systems. Concretely, physical conclusions are drawn from the assumption that the complexity classes {\bf P} and {\bf NP} differ. As a by-product, an alternative measure of entanglement is proposed which, via Chebyshev's inequality, allows to establish strict bounds on the required computational time.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2013

The circular Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation as an inflating, self-avoiding ring polymer

We consider the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation for a circular interface in two dimensions, unconstrained by the standard small-slopes and no-overhang approximations. Numerical simulations using an adaptive scheme allow us to elucidate the complete time evolution as a crossover between a short-time regime with the interface fluctuations of a self-avoiding ring or 2D vesicle, and a long-time regime governed by the Tracy-Widom distribution expected for this geometry. For small noise amplitudes, scaling behavior is only of the latter type. Large noise is also seen to renormalize the bare physical parameters of the ring, akin to analogous parameter renormalization for equilibrium 3D membranes. Our results bear particular importance on the relation between relevant universality classes of scale-invariant systems in two dimensions.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2013

Entanglement classes of permutation-symmetric qudit states: symmetric operations suffice

We analyse entanglement classes for permutation-symmetric states for n qudits (i.e. d-level systems), with respect to local unitary operations (LU-equivalence) and stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC equivalence). In both cases, we show that the search can be restricted to operations where the same local operation acts on all qudits, and we provide an explicit construction for it. Stabilizers of states in the form of one-particle operations preserving permutation symmetry are shown to provide a coarse-grained classification of entanglement classes. We prove that the Jordan form of such one-particle operator is a SLOCC invariant. We find, as representatives of those classes, a discrete set of entangled states that generalize the GHZ and W state for the many-particle qudit case. In the later case, we introduce "excitation states" as a natural generalization of the W state for d>2.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2012

Qubism: self-similar visualization of many-body wavefunctions

A visualization scheme for quantum many-body wavefunctions is described, which we have termed qubism. Its main property is its recursivity: increasing the number of qubits reflects in an increase in the image resolution. Thus, the plots are typically fractal. As examples, we provide images for the ground states of commonly used Hamiltonians in condensed matter and cold atom physics, such as Heisenberg or ITF. Many features of the wavefunction, such as magnetization, correlations and criticality, can be visualized as properties of the images. In particular, factorizability can be easily spotted, and a way to estimate the entanglement entropy from the image is provided.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Intrinsic geometry approach to surface kinetic roughening

A model for kinetic roughening of one-dimensional interfaces is presented within an intrinsic geometry framework that is free from the standard small-slope and no-overhang approximations. The model is meant to probe the consequences of the latter on the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) description of non-conserved, irreversible growth. Thus, growth always occurs along the local normal direction to the interface, with a rate that is subject to fluctuations and depends on the local curvature. Adaptive numerical techniques have been designed that are specially suited to the study of fractal morphologies and can support interfaces with large slopes and overhangs. Interface self-intersections are detected, and the ensuing cavities removed. After appropriate generalization of observables such as the global and local surface roughness functions, the interface scaling is seen in our simulations to be of the Family-Vicsek type for arbitrary curvature dependence of the growth rate, KPZ scaling appearing for large sytems sizes and sufficiently large noise amplitudes.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2011

The H=xp model revisited and the Riemann zeros

Berry and Keating conjectured that the classical Hamiltonian H = xp is related to the Riemann zeros. A regularization of this model yields semiclassical energies that behave, in average, as the non trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function. However, the classical trajectories are not closed, rendering the model incomplete. In this paper, we show that the Hamiltonian H = x (p + l_p^2/p) contains closed periodic orbits, and that its spectrum coincides with the average Riemann zeros. This result is generalized to Dirichlet L-functions using different self-adjoint extensions of H. We discuss the relation of our work to Polya's fake zeta function and suggest an experimental realization in terms of the Landau model.

math-ph↗

arXiv2009

Radiative corrections to the Higgs potential in the LH model

In this work we compute the radiative corrections to the Higgs mass and the Higgs quartic couplings coming from the Higgs sector itself and the scalar fields $ϕ$ in the Littlest Higgs (LH) model. The restrictions that the new contributions set on the parameter space of the models are also discussed. Finally this work, together with our three previous papers, complete our program addressed to compute the relevant contributions to the Higgs low-energy effective potential in the LH model and the analysis of their phenomenological consequences.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Reconstruction of the second layer of Ag on Pt(111)

The reconstruction of an Ag monolayer on Ag/Pt(111) is analyzed theoretically, employing a vertically extended Frenkel-Kontorova model whose parameters are derived from density functional theory. Energy minimization is carried out using simulated quantum annealing techniques. Our results are compatible with the STM experiments, where a striped pattern is initially found which transforms into a triangular reconstruction upon annealing. In our model we recognize the first structure as a metastable state, while the second one is the true energy minimum.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2008

Self-replicating functions and the renormalization group

The partial success of the block renormalization group techniques is analysed in terms of a functional operator which formalizes the idea of self-replicability of a system in terms of smaller blocks which are similar to the original. The mathematical properties of the fixed points of this transformation are analyzed.

math-ph↗

arXiv2007

Density matrix renormalization on random graphs and the quantum spin-glass transition

The density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) has been extended to study quantum phase transitions on random graphs of fixed connectivity. As a relevant example, we have analysed the random Ising model in a transverse field. If the couplings are random, the number of retained states remains reasonably low even for large sizes. The resulting quantum spin-glass transition has been traced down for a few disorder realizations, through the careful measurement of selected observables: spatial correlations, entanglement entropy, energy gap and spin-glass susceptibility, among others.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2007

Quantum wavefunction annealing of spin glasses

A technique inspired on quantum annealing is proposed in order to obtain the classical ground state of a spin-glass by tracking the full wavefunction of a given system within the subspace of matrix product states (MPS), using the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). The technique is exemplified within the problem of obtention of the classical ground state of an Ising spin glass on ladder geometries. Its performance is evaluated and related to the entanglement entropy.

quant-ph↗