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Michael Kolodrubetz

Publications and source records attributed to Michael Kolodrubetz.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Entanglement and magic transitions in an all-to-all non-Hermitian spin model

The long-time state of a non-Hermitian system is determined by the eigenvalue with the largest imaginary part. In interacting many-body systems this eigenvalue usually cannot be tracked analytically, and the character of the state it selects is unknown. We construct a non-Hermitian spin ensemble of $L$ spins with exactly $k$-local all-to-all interactions, in which this dominant eigenvalue can be tracked analytically from the clean limit into the disordered regime. Disorder produces a competition between an isolated spectral outlier and the edge of a many-body spectral bulk. We study three cases: purely anti-Hermitian disorder, purely Hermitian disorder, and mixed disorder of equal strength. For purely anti-Hermitian and mixed disorder, we show that when the bulk overtakes the outlier in imaginary part, the dominant eigenstate switches from an outlier state with low entanglement and magic (nonstabilizerness) to a bulk state with substantially larger entanglement and magic, with both changing at the same threshold. For $k \gg \sqrt{L}$ the bulk has a sharp spectral edge and the transition thresholds follow in closed form, while for $k \ll \sqrt{L}$ spectral tails broaden the transition into a crossover. Purely Hermitian disorder provides a contrasting case with no outlier-to-bulk switching. Finally, we map the non-Hermitian evolution exactly onto postselected trajectories of a monitored quantum system, connecting this spectral mechanism to measurement-induced transitions.

quant-ph

Mitigating Noise-Induced Barren Plateaus Using a Non-Unitary Ansatz: Application to Molecular Electronic Transport

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) offer a promising route toward simulating many-body quantum systems on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware. However, their scalability is severely limited by noise-induced barren plateaus (NIBPs), where hardware noise causes the gradients of the cost function to vanish exponentially with circuit depth, rendering optimization impossible. In this work, we demonstrate that introducing nonunitary elements into the variational ansatz can mitigate NIBPs in open-quantum systems. Using an analytically tractable infinite-range dissipative Ising model, we show that a nonunitary ansatz restores finite gradients in the presence of depolarizing noise, enabling convergence to the correct symmetry-broken steady state. We also develop a Floquet-type variational ansatz in which each layer repeats the same parameters, reducing the deep variational circuit to an effective quantum channel whose fixed points can be analyzed directly. We then extend these ideas to a realistic quantum-chemistry system by simulating electron transport through Oligophenylethynylene-sulfurmethyl (OPE-SMe) using Hamiltonians and jump operators of the model derived from first-principles polarizable QM/MM calculations. Our results show that nonunitary variational ans\"atze provide a scalable and physically grounded route for simulating open-system steady states on NISQ hardware, offering a pathway to overcoming one of the limitations of current quantum hardware.

quant-ph

Scalable Spin Squeezing in Power-Law Interacting XXZ Models with Disorder

While spin squeezing has been traditionally considered in all-to-all interacting models, recent works have shown that it can also occur in systems with power-law interactions, enabling direct tests in Rydberg atoms, trapped ions, ultracold atoms, and nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond. For the latter, Wu et al. Nature 646 (2025) demonstrated that spin squeezing is heavily affected by positional disorder, reducing any capacity for a practical squeezing advantage, which requires scalability with the system size. In this Letter we explore the robustness of spin squeezing in two-dimensional lattices with a fraction of unoccupied lattice sites. Using semiclassical modeling, we demonstrate the existence of scalable squeezing in power-law interacting XXZ models up to a disorder threshold, above which squeezing is not scalable. We produce a phase diagram for scalable squeezing, and explain its absence in the aforementioned NV experiment. Our work illustrates the maximum disorder allowed for realizing scalable spin squeezing in a host of quantum simulators, highlights a regime with substantial tolerance to disorder, and identifies controlled defect creation as a promising route for scalable squeezing in solid-state systems.

quant-ph

Coherent matter wave emission from an atomtronic transistor

The atomtronic matter-wave triple-well transistor is theoretically predicted to exhibit current gain and act as a coherent matter-wave emitter. In this work, we investigate the dynamics of an atomtronic transistor composed of a triple-well potential -- source, gate, and drain -- modeled by the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We systematically explore the dependence of the drain population and the current on the source bias potential and the strength of the interatomic interaction. Our simulations reveal signatures of resonant tunneling when the source chemical potential aligns with discrete energy levels in the gate well, leading to coherent matter-wave emission in the drain. Contrary to previous many-body studies that predicted interaction-induced current gain via coupling to gate well modes, our results suggest that coherence in the drain is primarily governed by single-particle resonances, with no evident broadening from nonlinear coupling.

cond-mat.quant-gas

Effects of non-integrability in a non-Hermitian time crystal

Time crystals are systems that spontaneously break time-translation symmetry, exhibiting repeating patterns in time. Recent work has shown that non-Hermitian Floquet systems can host a time crystalline phase with quasi-long-range order. In this work, we investigate the effect of introducing a non-integrable interaction term into this non-Hermitian time crystal model. Using a combination of numerical TEBD simulations, mean-field analysis, and perturbation theory, we find that the interaction term has two notable effects. First, it induces a shift in the phase diagram, moving the boundaries between different phases. Second, a sufficiently strong interaction induces an unexpected symmetry-breaking transition, which is not captured by the mean-field approach. Within average Hamiltonian theory, we trace this back to a ferromagnetic transition in the anisotropic non-Hermitian XXZ model. Our results demonstrate that the interplay between non-Hermitian dynamics and many-body interactions can lead to novel symmetry breaking.

cond-mat.str-el

Effect of noise on quantum circuit realization of non-Hermitian time crystals

Non-Hermitian quantum dynamics lie in an intermediate regime between unitary Hamiltonian dynamics and trace-preserving non-unitary open quantum system dynamics. Given differences in the noise tolerance of unitary and non-unitary dynamics, it is interesting to consider implementing non-Hermitian dynamics on a noisy quantum computer. In this paper, we do so for a non-Hermitian Ising Floquet model whose many-body dynamics gives rise to persistent temporal oscillations, a form of time crystallinity. In the simplest two qubit case that we consider, there is an infinitely long-lived periodic steady state at certain fine-tuned points. These oscillations remain reasonably long-lived over a range of parameters in the ideal non-Hermitean dynamics and for the levels of noise and imperfection expected of modern day quantum devices. Using a generalized Floquet analysis, we show that infinitely long-lived oscillations are generically lost for arbitrarily weak values of common types of noise and compute corresponding damping rate. We perform simulations using IBM's Qiskit platform to confirm our findings; however, experiments on a real device (ibmq-lima) do not show remnants of these oscillations.

cond-mat.str-el

Zeno physics of the Ising chain with symmetry-breaking boundary dephasing

In few-qubit systems, the quantum Zeno effect arises when measurement occurs sufficiently frequently that the spins are unable to relax between measurements. This can compete with Hamiltonian terms, resulting in interesting relaxation processes which depend non-monotonically on the ratio of measurement rate to coherent oscillations. While Zeno physics for a single qubit is well-understood, an interesting open question is how the Zeno effect is modified by coupling the measured spin to a non-trivial bulk. In this work, we study the effect of coupling a one-dimensional transverse field Ising to a Zeno spin which lives at the boundary. We find that sharp singularities occur in the boundary relaxation dynamics, which can be tied to the emergence or destruction of edge modes that can be found analytically. Finally, we provide numerical evidence that the dynamical singularities are stable in the presence of integrability-breaking interactions.

cond-mat.str-el

Disorder induced topological phase transition in a driven Majorana chain

We study a periodically driven one dimensional Kitaev model in the presence of disorder. In the clean limit our model exhibits four topological phases corresponding to the existence or non-existence of edge modes at zero and pi quasienergy. When disorder is added, the system parameters get renormalized and the system may exhibit a topological phase transition. When starting from the Majorana $\pi$ Mode (MPM) phase, which hosts only edge Majoranas with quasienergy pi, disorder induces a transition into a neighboring phase with both pi and zero modes on the edges. We characterize the disordered system using (i) exact diagonalization (ii) Arnoldi mapping onto an effective tight binding chain and (iii) topological entanglement entropy.

cond-mat.supr-con

Optimality of Lindblad unfolding in measurement phase transitions

Entanglement phase transitions in hybrid quantum circuits describe individual quantum trajectories rather than the measurement-averaged ensemble, despite the fact that results of measurements are not conventionally used for feedback. Here, we numerically demonstrate that a class of generalized measurements with identical measurement-averaged dynamics give different phases and phase transitions. We show that measurement-averaged destruction of Bell state entanglement is a useful proxy for determining which hybrid circuit yields the lowest-entanglement dynamics. We use this to argue that no unfolding of our model can avoid a volume law phase, which has implications for simulation of open quantum systems.

quant-ph

Counting edge modes via dynamics of boundary spin impurities

We study dynamics of the one-dimensional Ising model in the presence of static symmetry-breaking boundary field via the two-time autocorrelation function of the boundary spin. We find that the correlations decay as a power law. We uncover a dynamical phase diagram where, upon tuning the strength of the boundary field, we observe distinct power laws that directly correspond to changes in the number of edge modes as the boundary and bulk magnetic field are varied. We suggest how the universal physics can be demonstrated in current experimental setups, such as Rydberg chains.

cond-mat.stat-mech

Quasiperiodic Floquet-Thouless energy pump

Recent work [M. H. Kolodrubetz et al, PRL 120, 150601] has demonstrated that periodically driven one-dimensional fermionic systems can support quantized energy pumping resulting from an adiabatic modulation of a second parameter. In this work, we explore this topological Floquet-Thouless energy pump in the quasiperiodic driving regime where the parametric driving occurs at finite frequency. We show that quantization of energy pumping persists for finite ramping frequencies, as long as they are incommensurate with the driving frequency, and the system remains localized by spatial disorder. Thus, the topological Floquet-Thouless energy pump is stable beyond the adiabatic regime, occupying a finite region of parameter space. Phase transitions away from these topological phases are accompanied by delocalization in position space, photon number (energy) space, or both. Using a dimensional reduction scheme, we demonstrate that a related phase can be realized with a cavity-qubit system driven by two incommensurate modes.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Floquet engineering of lattice structure and dimensionality in twisted moiré heterobilayers

We present an experimental proposal to tune the effective lattice structure in twisted transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) heterobilayers with time-periodic Floquet drive. We show that elliptically polarized light with sub-terahertz frequencies $\hbarω\sim 1$ meV and moderate electric fields $E\sim0.2$~MV/cm allows tuning between the native triangular lattice and a square lattice, while linearly polarized light enables dimensional reduction to a quasi-one-dimensional geometry. Without drive, these twisted TMDs simulate the single band Fermi-Hubbard model; we show that this approximation still holds in the presence of drive. This control opens the door to explore a rich variety of correlated phases of matter, such as spin liquids and d-wave superconductivity.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Floquet engineering flat bands for bosonic fractional quantum Hall in small lattices

The quest to realize novel phases of matter with topological order is an important pursuit with implications for strongly correlated physics and quantum information. Utilizing ideas from state-of-the-art coherent control of artificial quantum systems such as superconducting circuits, we present a proposal to realize bosonic fractional quantum Hall physics on small lattices by creating nearly flat topological bands using staggered flux patterns. Fingerprints of fractionalization through charge pumping can be observed with nearly perfect quantization using as few as 24 lattice sites (two photons). We suggest an implementation using a finite lattice of superconducting qubits with cylindrical connectivity on both triangular and square lattices.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Localization dynamics in a centrally coupled system

In systems where interactions couple a central degree of freedom and a bath, one would expect signatures of the bath's phase to be reflected in the dynamics of the central degree of freedom. This has been recently explored in connection with many-body localized baths coupled with a central qubit or a single cavity mode -- systems with growing experimental relevance in various platforms. Such models also have an interesting connection with Floquet many-body localization via quantizing the external drive, although this has been relatively unexplored. Here we adapt the multilayer multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree (ML-MCTDH) method, a well-known tree tensor network algorithm, to numerically simulate the dynamics of a central degree of freedom, represented by a $d$-level system (qudit), coupled to a disordered interacting 1D spin bath. ML-MCTDH allows us to reach $\approx 10^2$ lattice sites, a far larger system size than what is feasible with exact diagonalization or kernel polynomial methods. From the intermediate time dynamics, we find a well-defined thermodynamic limit for the qudit dynamics upon appropriate rescaling of the system-bath coupling. The spin system shows similar scaling collapse in the Edward-Anderson spin glass order parameter or entanglement entropy at relatively short times. At longer time scales, we see slow growth of the entanglement, which may arise from dephasing mechanisms in the localized system or long-range interactions mediated by the central degree of freedom. Similar signs of localization are shown to appear as well with unscaled system-bath coupling.

cond-mat.dis-nn

Many body localization in the presence of a central qudit

We consider a many-body localized system coupled globally to a central $d$-level system. Under an appropriate scaling of $d$ and $L$, we find evidence that the localized phase survives. We argue for two possible thermalizing phases, depending on whether the qudit becomes fully ergodic. This system provides one of the first examples of many-body localization in the presence of long-range (non-confining) interactions.

cond-mat.dis-nn

Strong-Disorder Renormalization Group for Periodically Driven Systems

Quenched randomness can lead to robust non-equilibrium phases of matter in periodically driven (Floquet) systems. Analyzing transitions between such dynamical phases requires a method capable of treating the twin complexities of disorder and discrete time-translation symmetry. We introduce a real-space renormalization group approach, asymptotically exact in the strong-disorder limit, and exemplify its use on the periodically driven interacting quantum Ising model. We analyze the universal physics near the critical lines and multicritical point of this model, and demonstrate the robustness of our results to the inclusion of weak interactions.

cond-mat.dis-nn

Floquet Quantum Criticality

We study transitions between distinct phases of one-dimensional periodically driven (Floquet) systems. We argue that these are generically controlled by infinite-randomness fixed points of a strong-disorder renormalization group procedure. Working in the fermionic representation of the prototypical Floquet Ising chain, we leverage infinite randomness physics to provide a simple description of Floquet (multi)criticality in terms of a new type of domain wall associated with time-translational symmetry-breaking and the formation of `Floquet time crystals'. We validate our analysis via numerical simulations of free-fermion models sufficient to capture the critical physics.

cond-mat.dis-nn

Absence of Thermalization in Finite Isolated Interacting Floquet Systems

Conventional wisdom suggests that the long time behavior of isolated interacting periodically driven (Floquet) systems is a featureless maximal entropy state characterized by an infinite temperature. Efforts to thwart this uninteresting fixed point include adding sufficient disorder to realize a Floquet many-body localized phase or working in a narrow region of drive frequencies to achieve glassy non-thermal behavior at long time. Here we show that in clean systems the Floquet eigenstates can exhibit non-thermal behavior due to finite system size. We consider a one-dimensional system of spinless fermions with nearest-neighbor interactions where the interaction term is driven. Interestingly, even with no static component of the interaction, the quasienergy spectrum contains gaps and a significant fraction of the Floquet eigenstates, at all quasienergies, have non-thermal average doublon densities. We show that this non-thermal behavior arises due to emergent integrability at large interaction strength and discuss how the integrability breaks down with power-law dependence on system size.

cond-mat.quant-gas