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Marco Schirò

Publications and source records attributed to Marco Schirò.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Electrostatics-induced breakdown of the integer quantum Hall effect in cavity QED

We address the prevailing theoretical explanation of the recently observed breakdown of the integer quantum Hall effect in a two-dimensional electron gas embedded in a metallic split-ring resonator. Within the same single-particle description of quantized Hall conductance, we compare previously proposed vacuum-induced transport modifications against an alternative mechanism that explains this breakdown in terms of non-chiral edge channels arising solely from electrostatic boundary effects. This direct comparison shows that for experimentally relevant parameters, the electrostatic contribution exceeds that of any vacuum-induced conductance modifications by many orders of magnitude and yields characteristic transport signatures and energy scales that align well with experimental observations. This finding sheds new light on this puzzling phenomenon, supporting an electrostatic rather than a vacuum-related interpretation that can be directly tested in experiments.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Entanglement growth in the dark intervals of a locally monitored free-fermion chain

We consider a free fermionic chain with monitoring of the particle density on a single site of the chain and study the entanglement dynamics of quantum jump trajectories. We show that the entanglement entropy grows in time towards a stationary state which display volume law scaling of the entropy, in stark contrast with both the unitary dynamics after a local quench and the no-click limit corresponding to full post-selection. We explain the extensive entanglement growth as a consequence of the peculiar distribution of quantum jumps in time, which display superpoissonian waiting time distribution characterised by a bunching of quantum jumps followed by long dark intervals where no-clicks are detected, akin to the distribution of fluorescence light in a driven atom. We show that the presence of dark intervals is the key feature to explain the effect and that by increasing the number of sites which are monitored the volume law scaling gives away to the Zeno effect and its associated area law.

quant-ph↗

Sambe Approach to Floquet-Lindblad Open Quantum Systems

We study driven and open quantum systems described by a time-periodic Lindblad master equation. In closed systems, the stroboscopic dynamics can always be described by an effective time-independent Floquet Hamiltonian; this idea is the basis of Floquet engineering. However, in the presence of dissipation, the existence of an effective time-independent Floquet Lindbladian is not guaranteed due to the non-unitary nature of the evolution. Using Floquet theory, we construct a well-defined time-independent Floquet Lindbladian in an extended Sambe-Liouville space, transforming the initial time-dependent problem to a static and non-Hermitian eigenvalue problem. For harmonic driving, we introduce a matrix continued fraction method to nonperturbatively resum multiphoton processes and construct an effective Floquet Lindbladian acting only on the physical Liouville space. Compared to other high-frequency expansions, this method has the advantage of providing the whole infinite series expansion at once. Using a resolvent formalism, we show how to obtain a spectral Floquet representation of correlation functions of an open quantum system. As an application, we consider a dissipating two-level system in a linearly polarized field and calculate its resonance fluorescence spectrum. Furthermore, we consider a parametrically driven quantum dot with pump and loss for which we calculate its spectral function and current-voltage characteristics.

quant-ph↗

Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev physics from the Hubbard model: A Floquet engineering approach

The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model has attracted widespread attention due to its relevance to diverse areas of physics, such as high temperature superconductivity, black holes, and quantum chaos. The model is, however, extremely challenging to realize experimentally. In this work, we show how a particular form of Floquet engineering, termed ``kinetic driving'', effectively eliminates single-particle processes and creates quasi-random all-to-all interactions when applied to models of Hubbard type. For the specific case of the Bose-Hubbard model, we explicitly verify that the driven system indeed reproduces SYK physics by direct comparison of the spectral form factor and out-of-time ordered correlation functions (OTOCs). Our findings indicate that a cold-atom realization of kinetic driving -- achieved through modulation of hopping amplitudes in an optical lattice -- offers a practical and accurate platform for quantum simulation of the SYK model.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

Entanglement Dynamics across a Monitored Quantum Point Contact

We compute the entanglement dynamics across a monitored quantum point contact, where particle losses are recorded on a given site, and demonstrate how this single-site local monitoring substantially reshapes the entanglement production. Contrary to the unitary case, where entanglement entropy grows logarithmically in time, here we find first a linear growth, up to a maximum value displaying volume-law scaling, and then a slow decay to zero, as the system empties out. We capture this crossover using a quasiparticle picture, where the first linear growth arises due to an emergent bias voltage established by the losses, which eventually decays away as the system depletes. We connect our results to studies of the Page curve and to experimentally relevant probes, via full counting statistics of charge transfer across a subregion, with only a single channel to unravel leading to a favorable scaling of the postselection overhead. Natural platforms for this setting include mesoscopic systems and ultracold atoms.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Slave-spin approach to the Anderson-Josephson quantum dot

We study a strongly interacting quantum dot connected to two superconducting leads using a slave-spin representation of the dot. At the mean-field level, the problem maps to a resonant level model with superconducting leads, coupled to an auxiliary spin-1/2 variable accounting for the parity of the dot. We obtain the mean-field phase diagram, showing a transition between a Kondo (singlet) and a local moment (doublet) regime, corresponding to the $0-π$ transition of the junction. The mean-field theory qualitatively captures the Kondo singlet phase and its competition with superconductivity for weak values of the BCS gap, including the non-trivial dependence of the Andreev bound states on the interaction, but fails in the doublet regime where it predicts a dot decoupled from the bath. Using diagrammatic techniques and a random phase approximation, we include fluctuations on top of the mean-field theory to describe finite-frequency dynamics of the effective spin variable. This leads to the formation of high-energy Hubbard bands in the spectral function and a coherent Kondo peak with a BCS gap at low energies. We compute the Josephson current and the induced superconducting correlations on the dot. Finally, we evaluate the microwave response in the strongly interacting Kondo regime.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Poor man's Majorana bound states in quantum dot based Kitaev chain coupled to a photonic cavity

Quantum dot based platforms offer a promising route towards realizing the Kitaev chain Hamiltonian hosting Majorana bound states (MBSs). Poor man's MBSs arise in a two-site Kitaev chain when the parameters of the system are fine-tuned to the sweet spot. Based on our previous work [Phys. Rev. B 111, 155410 (2025)], we consider a microscopic model for the Kitaev chain based on quantum dots with proximity effect embedded in a photonic cavity. We find that the photon coupling in the microscopic model yields an effective Hamiltonian where the cavity affects the pairing term. However, we demonstrate that even in this case, it is possible to screen particle interactions and reach the sweet spot condition for the emergence of the poor man's MBSs. In particular, we find that attractive particle interactions can be canceled for the cavity prepared in the zero-photon state, while repulsive ones can be screened with a cavity prepared in the one-photon state. Furthermore, in case of a large number of photons in the cavity, we find that the hopping amplitudes are suppressed resulting in a degenerate spectrum. This motivates the use of quantum light for engineering poor man's MBSs with cavity embedding.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Active Quantum Particles from Engineered Dissipation

We introduce and characterize different models for an active quantum particle where activity arises from engineered dissipation-- specifically, from a suitably coupled nonequilibrium environment. These include a model of a particle moving on a lattice with coherent and dissipative hopping, as well as quantum generalizations of well-studied models of active behavior, such as the active Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, run-and-tumble dynamics, and the active Brownian particle. Despite the different microscopic mechanisms at play, we show that all these models display key features of active motion. Notably, we observe a crossover from diffusive to active-diffusive behavior at long times, leading to an effective Péclet number, as well as a strong sensitivity to boundary conditions which, in our open quantum system context, arises from the Liouville skin effect. We discuss the role of quantum fluctuations and experimental realizations with superconducting circuits or cold gases, closing with perspectives for many-body effects in quantum active matter.

quant-ph↗

Nonequilibrium transport through an interacting monitored quantum dot

We study the interplay between strong correlations and Markovian dephasing, resulting from monitoring the charge or spin degrees of freedom of a quantum dot described by a dissipative Anderson impurity model. Using the Auxiliary master equation approach we compute the steady-state spectral function and occupation of the dot and discuss the role of dephasing on Kondo physics. Furthermore, we consider a two-lead setup which allows to compute the steady-state current and conductance. We show that the Kondo steady-state is robust to moderate charge dephasing but not to spin dephasing, which we interpret in terms of dephasing-induced heating of low-energy excitations. Finally, we show universal scaling collapse of the non-linear conductance with a dephasing-dependent Kondo scale.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Dissipative phase transition of interacting non-reciprocal fermions

While non-reciprocal couplings are ubiquitous in classical systems, their impact on quantum many-body criticality and entanglement remains largely unexplored. Using exact numerical simulations, we study an interacting fermionic chain subject to non-reciprocal gain and loss. We show that the interplay between dissipation and interactions drives a dissipative phase transition, marked by the opening of a many-body gap and a crossover from power-law to exponential relaxation. The weakly-interacting regime displays non-reciprocal signatures, including nonzero currents and directional charge accumulation reminiscent of the skin effect. Notably, despite this localization, quantum trajectories exhibit volume-law entanglement. Finally, reciprocity is dynamically restored above a critical interaction strength.

quant-ph↗

Replica Field Theory of Quantum Jumps Monitoring: Application to the Ising Chain

In this work we derive the replica field theory for monitored quantum many-body systems evolving under the quantum jumps protocol, corresponding to a non-Hermitian evolution interspersed with random quantum jumps whose distribution is state-dependent. We show that the density matrix of $R$ replicas evolves according to a master equation where the non-Hermitian term is replica-diagonal while coupling among replicas are due to quantum jumps. We write down the associated Keldysh action and study its behavior for the specific case of the Ising Chain with monitoring of particle density and tunable anisotropy, interpolating between free fermions with strong U(1) symmetry and the Ising chain with Z$_2$ symmetry. We derive the effective field theory in terms of slowly varying fields and obtain the replica-diagonal saddle point, which we show to describe the average state. We then go beyond saddle point and derive the effective field theory describing the replica off-diagonal sector, which takes the form of a Non-Linear Sigma Model. The symmetry class is either DIII or D, depending on the parameters of the Ising chain, except at a special symmetric point, where we recover the results for free fermions. We discuss the implications of these findings for the entangling phase observed numerically for the monitored Ising chain.

quant-ph↗

Non-Stabilizerness of Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev Model

We study the non-stabilizerness or quantum magic of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev ($\rm SYK$) model, a prototype example of maximally chaotic quantum matter. We show that the Majorana spectrum of its ground state, encoding the spreading of the state in the Majorana basis, displays a Gaussian distribution as expected for chaotic quantum many-body systems. We compare our results with the case of the $\rm SYK_2$ model, describing non-chaotic random free fermions, and show that the Majorana spectrum is qualitatively different in the two cases, featuring an exponential Laplace distribution for the $\rm SYK_2$ model rather than a Gaussian. From the spectrum we extract the Stabilizer Renyi Entropy (SRE) and show that for both models it displays a linear scaling with system size, with a prefactor that is larger for the SYK model, which has therefore higher magic. Finally, we discuss the spreading of quantun magic under unitary dynamics, as described by the evolution of the Majorana spectrum and the Stabilizer Renyi Entropy starting from a stabilizer state. We show that the SRE for the $\rm SYK_2$ model equilibrates rapidly, but that in the steady-state the interacting chaotic SYK model has more magic than the simple $\rm SYK_2$. Our results suggest that the Majorana spectrum is qualitatively distinct in chaotic and non-chaotic many-body systems.

quant-ph↗

Time-dependent Variational Principles for Hybrid Non-Unitary Dynamics: Application to Driven-Dissipative Superconductors

We introduce time-dependent variational principles to study the non-unitary dynamics of open quantum many-body systems, including dynamics described by the full Lindblad master equation, the non-Hermitian dynamics corresponding to the no-click limit of the fully post-selected quantum trajectories, and the dynamics described by a hybrid Lindbladian with a control parameter $α$ which interpolates between the full post-selection and averaging over all quantum trajectories. As an application we study the non-unitary dynamics of a lossy or driven-dissipative BCS superconductors, evolving in presence of two-body losses and two-body pumps. We show that the non-Hermitian limit acts as a singular limit of the hybrid dissipative dynamics, leading to a sharp modification of the universal approach to the driven-dissipative steady-states. By considering the dissipative dynamics with pair losses, we show that, as the non-Hermitian limit is approached, the density dynamics sharply evolves from a universal power-law to exponential decay that converges towards a quasi-steady plateau characterized by the freezing of the particle depletion due to pair losses. The reached quasi-stationary density increases as a function of the dissipation rate highlighting the emergence of a non-Hermitian Zeno effect in the lossy dynamics. For the driven-dissipative case, we show that, in the non-Hermitian limit, the system gets trapped into an effective negative temperature state, thus skipping the infinite temperature steady-state reached in the presence of finite contribution of the quantum jumps. We rationalize these findings in terms of the conservation of the length of the pseudospins which, in the non-Hermitian limit, suppresses the effective single-particle losses and pumps acting on the non-condensed particles.

quant-ph↗

Symmetries, Conservation Laws and Entanglement in Non-Hermitian Fermionic Lattices

Non-Hermitian quantum many-body systems feature steady-state entanglement transitions driven by the competition between unitary dynamics and dissipation. In this work, we reveal the fundamental role of conservation laws in shaping this competition. Focusing on translation-invariant non-interacting fermionic models with U(1) symmetry, we present a theoretical framework to understand the structure of the steady-state of these models and their entanglement content based on two ingredients: the nature of the spectrum of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and the constraints imposed on the steady-state single-particle occupation by the conserved quantities. These emerge from an interplay between Hamiltonian symmetries and initial state, due to the non-linearity of measurement back-action. For models with complex energy spectrum, we show that the steady state is obtained by filling single-particle right eigenstates with the largest imaginary part of the eigenvalue. As a result, one can have partially filled or fully filled bands in the steady-state, leading to an entanglement entropy undergoing a filling-driven transition between critical sub volume scaling and area-law, similar to ground-state problems. Conversely, when the spectrum is fully real, we provide evidence that local observables can be captured using a diagonal ensemble, and the entanglement entropy exhibits a volume-law scaling independently on the initial state, akin to unitary dynamics. We illustrate these principles in the Hatano-Nelson model with periodic boundary conditions and the non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, uncovering a rich interplay between the single-particle spectrum and conservation laws in determining the steady-state structure and the entanglement transitions. These conclusions are supported by exact analytical calculations and numerical calculations relying on the Faber polynomial method.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

Floquet Theory of lattice electrons coupled to an off-resonant cavity

We use Floquet theory and the High-Frequency expansion to derive an effective Hamiltonian for electrons coupled to an off resonant cavity mode, either in its vacuum or driven by classical light. For vacuum fields, we show that long-range hopping and cavity-mediated interactions arise as a direct consequence of quantum fluctuations. As an application, this method is applied to the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model. At high light-matter coupling, our results reveal significant deviations from mean-field predictions, with our framework capturing light-matter entanglement through the Floquet micromotion. Furthermore, the cavity-mediated interactions appearing at first order are shown to be crucial to the description of the system at sufficiently strong light-matter coupling for a fixed cavity frequency. Finally, a drive resonant with the cavity is added with the SSH chain displaying dynamical behavior dependent on the cavity parameters.

cond-mat.str-el↗

Heating Dynamics of Correlated Fermions under Dephasing

We study the dissipative dynamics of correlated fermions evolving in presence of a local dephasing bath. To this extent we consider the infinite coordination limit of the corresponding Lindblad master equation, provided by Dynamical Mean-Field Theory for open quantum systems. We solve the resulting quantum impurity problem, describing an Anderson impurity coupled to a local dephasing, using weak-coupling perturbation theory in interaction and dephasing. We show that the dissipative dynamics describes heating towards infinite temperature, with a relaxation rate that depends strongly on interaction. The resulting steady-state spectral functions are however non-trivial and show an interplay between coherent quasiparticle peak and local dephasing. We then discuss how thermalization towards infinite temperature emerges within DMFT, by solving the impurity problem throughout its self-consistency. We show that thermalization under open quantum system dynamics is qualitatively different from the closed system case. In particular, the thermalization front found in the unitary is strongly modified, a signature of the irreversibility of the open system dynamics.

cond-mat.str-el↗

Dissipative Kondo physics in the Anderson Impurity Model with two-body losses

We study a dissipative version of the Anderson Impurity model, where an interacting impurity is coupled to a fermionic reservoir and exposed to Markovian dissipation in the form of two-body losses. Using a self-consistent hybridization expansion based on the Non-Crossing Approximation (NCA) we compute the dynamics of the impurity, its steady-state and spectral function. We show that the interplay between strong Coulomb repulsion and correlated dissipation gives rise to robust signatures of Kondo physics both at weak and strong losses. These include a strongly suppressed spin relaxation rate, displaying a characteristic Kondo-Zeno crossover and a spectral function where doublon band is quickly destroyed by dissipation while the coherent Kondo peak remains visible for weak losses, then disappears at intermediate values and finally re-emerge as the system enters in the Kondo-Zeno regime. As compared to the case of single particle losses we show that two-body dissipation protects Kondo physics. The picture obtained with NCA is confirmed by numerical simulations of exact dynamics on finite-size chains. We interpret these results using a dissipative Schrieffer-Wolff transformation, which leads to an effective Kondo model with residual impurity-bath losses which are suppressed by strong correlations or strong losses.

cond-mat.str-el↗

Dynamics of the Bose-Hubbard Model Induced by On-Site or Long-Range Two-Body Losses

We present a theoretical study of the dissipative dynamics of the Bose-Hubbard model induced by on-site or long-range two-body losses. We first consider the one-dimensional chain and the two-dimensional square lattice, and study the dynamics induced by the sudden switch-on of two-body losses on a weakly-interacting superfluid state. The time-dependent density is obtained in the spirit of the Bogolyubov approach by calculating theoretically the equations of motion associated to the relevant quadratic bosonic correlators. In the one-dimensional case, our results compare very well with quasi-exact numerical calculations based on the quantum jump method implemented using tensor networks. We find that the intermediate-time dynamics of the density displays an algebraic decay characterized by an interaction-dependent power-law exponent. The latter property still holds for long-range two-body loss processes but it is absent in the two-dimensional square lattice with on-site losses.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗