arXiv subjects

Michael Sonner

Publications and source records attributed to Michael Sonner.

16 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Multibath Influence Matrices: Universal Scaling from Real-Time Dynamics

Diverging timescales are the hallmark of critical dynamics and the bottleneck to their classical and quantum simulation. To tame this, we compress a spacetime tensor network: temporally into semigroup influence matrices and spatially via matrix-product states. Benchmarking on the two-impurity Anderson model with its four fermionic species, we compute spectral functions to map the evolution from a Kondo resonance, across a non-Fermi-liquid quantum critical point, and into a gapped singlet phase. Resolving transient through asymptotic dynamics in sudden quenches and Kibble-Zurek ramps, we obtain the universal two-channel-Kondo exponent. Together, these results establish multibath influence matrices as a practical tool for real-time dynamics in strongly correlated multi-orbital systems.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Temporal entanglement transition in chaotic quantum many-body dynamics

Temporal entanglement (TE) of an influence matrix (IM) has been proposed as a measure of complexity of simulating dynamics of local observables in a many-body system. Foligno et al. [Phys. Rev. X 13, 041008 (2023)] recently argued that the TE in chaotic 1d quantum circuits obeys linear (volume-law) scaling with evolution time. To reconcile this apparent high complexity of IM with the rapid thermalization of local observables, here we study the relation between TE, non-Markovianity, and local temporal correlations for chaotic quantum baths. By exactly solving a random-unitary bath model, and bounding distillable entanglement between future and past degrees of freedom, we argue that TE is extensive for low enough bath growth rate, and it reflects genuine non-Markovianity. This memory, however, is entirely contained in highly complex temporal correlations, and its effect on few-point temporal correlators is negligible. An IM coarse-graining procedure, reducing the allowed frequency of measurements of the probe system, results in a transition from volume- to area-law TE scaling. We demonstrate the generality of this TE transition in 1d circuits by analyzing the kicked Ising model analytically at dual-unitary points, as well as numerically away from them. This finding indicates that dynamics of local observables are fully captured by an area-law IM. We provide evidence that the compact IM MPS obtained via standard compression algorithms accurately describes local evolution.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Steady-state dynamical mean field theory based on influence functional matrix product states

We implement the recently developed influence functional matrix product states approach as impurity solver in equilibrium and nonequilibrium dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) calculations of the single-band Hubbard model. The method yields numerically exact descriptions of metallic states without sharp spectral features, at a moderate numerical cost. Systems with narrow quasiparticle or spin-polaron peaks, as well as low-temperature Mott insulators provide more challenges, since these simulations require long time contours or high bond dimensions. A promising field of application is the DMFT simulation of nonequilibrium steady states, which we demonstrate with results for photo-doped Mott systems with long-lived doublon and holon populations.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Semi-group influence matrices for non-equilibrium quantum impurity models

We introduce a framework for describing the real-time dynamics of quantum impurity models out of equilibrium which is based on the influence matrix approach. By replacing the dynamical map of a large fermionic quantum environment with an effective semi-group influence matrix (SGIM) which acts on a reduced auxiliary space, we overcome the limitations of previous proposals, achieving high accuracy at long evolution times. This SGIM corresponds to a uniform matrix-product state representation of the influence matrix and can be obtained by an efficient algorithm presented in this paper. We benchmark this approach by computing the spectral function of the single impurity Anderson model with high resolution. Further, the spectrum of the effective dynamical map allows us to obtain relaxation rates of the impurity towards equilibrium following a quantum quench. Finally, for a quantum impurity model with on-site two-fermion loss, we compute the spectral function and confirm the emergence of Kondo physics at large loss rates.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2024

Scalable tomography of many-body quantum environments with low temporal entanglement

Describing dynamics of a quantum system coupled to a complex many-body environment is a ubiquitous problem in quantum science. General non-Markovian environments are characterized by their influence matrix~(IM) -- a multi-time tensor arising from repeated interactions between the system and environment. While complexity of the most generic IM grows exponentially with the evolution time, recent works argued that for many instances of physical many-body environments, the IM is significantly less complex. This is thanks to area-law scaling of temporal entanglement, which quantifies the correlations between the past and the future states of the system. However, efficient classical algorithms for computing IM are only available for non-interacting environments or certain interacting 1D environments. Here, we study a learning algorithm for reconstructing IMs of large many-body environments simulated on a quantum processor. This hybrid algorithm involves experimentally collecting quantum measurement results of auxiliary qubits which are repeatedly coupled to the many-body environment, followed by a classical machine-learning construction of a matrix-product (MPS) representation of the IM. Using the example of 1D spin-chain environments, with a classically generated training dataset, we demonstrate that the algorithm allows scalable reconstruction of IMs for long evolution times. The reconstructed IM can be used to efficiently model quantum transport through an impurity, including cases with multiple leads and time-dependent controls. These results indicate the feasibility of characterizing long-time dynamics of complex environments using a limited number of measurements, under the assumption of a moderate temporal entanglement.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Equilibrium Quantum Impurity Problems via Matrix Product State Encoding of the Retarded Action

In the $0+1$ dimensional imaginary-time path integral formulation of quantum impurity problems, the retarded action encodes the hybridization of the impurity with the bath. In this Article, we explore the computational power of representing the retarded action as matrix product state (RAMPS). We focus on the challenging Kondo regime of the single-impurity Anderson model, where non-perturbative strong-correlation effects arise at very low energy scales. We demonstrate that the RAMPS approach reliably reaches the Kondo regime for a range of interaction strengths $U$, with a numerical error scaling as a weak power law with inverse temperature. We investigate the convergence behavior of the method with respect to bond dimension and time discretization by analyzing the error of local observables in the full interacting problem and find polynomial scaling in both parameters. Our results show that the RAMPS approach offers promise as an alternative tool for studying quantum impurity problems in regimes that challenge established methods, such as multi-orbital systems. Overall, our study contributes to the development of efficient and accurate non-wavefunction-based tensor-network methods for quantum impurity problems.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Noise-resilient Edge Modes on a Chain of Superconducting Qubits

Inherent symmetry of a quantum system may protect its otherwise fragile states. Leveraging such protection requires testing its robustness against uncontrolled environmental interactions. Using 47 superconducting qubits, we implement the one-dimensional kicked Ising model which exhibits non-local Majorana edge modes (MEMs) with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ parity symmetry. Remarkably, we find that any multi-qubit Pauli operator overlapping with the MEMs exhibits a uniform late-time decay rate comparable to single-qubit relaxation rates, irrespective of its size or composition. This characteristic allows us to accurately reconstruct the exponentially localized spatial profiles of the MEMs. Furthermore, the MEMs are found to be resilient against certain symmetry-breaking noise owing to a prethermalization mechanism. Our work elucidates the complex interplay between noise and symmetry-protected edge modes in a solid-state environment.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

An efficient method for quantum impurity problems out of equilibrium

We introduce an efficient method to simulate dynamics of an interacting quantum impurity coupled to non-interacting fermionic reservoirs. Viewing the impurity as an open quantum system, we describe the reservoirs by their Feynman-Vernon influence functionals (IF). The IF are represented as matrix-product states in the temporal domain, which enables an efficient computation of dynamics for arbitrary interactions. We apply our method to study quantum quenches and transport in an Anderson impurity model, including highly non-equilibrium setups, and find favorable performance compared to state-of-the-art methods. The computational resources required for an accurate computation of dynamics scale polynomially with evolution time, indicating that a broad class of out-of-equilibrium quantum impurity problems are efficiently solvable. This approach will provide new insights into dynamical properties of mesoscopic devices and correlated materials.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Overcoming the entanglement barrier in quantum many-body dynamics via space-time duality

Describing non-equilibrium properties of quantum many-body systems is challenging due to high entanglement in the wavefunction. We describe evolution of local observables via the influence matrix (IM), which encodes the effects of a many-body system as an environment for local subsystems. Recent works found that in many dynamical regimes the IM of an infinite system has low temporal entanglement and can be efficiently represented as a matrix-product state (MPS). Yet, direct iterative constructions of the IM encounter highly entangled intermediate states - a temporal entanglement barrier (TEB). We argue that TEB is ubiquitous, and elucidate its physical origin via a semiclassical quasiparticle picture that exactly captures the behavior of integrable spin chains. Further, we show that a TEB also arises in chaotic spin chains, which lack well-defined quasiparticles. Based on these insights, we formulate an alternative light-cone growth algorithm, which provably avoids TEB, thus providing an efficient construction of the thermodynamic-limit IM as a MPS. This work uncovers the origin of the efficiency of the IM approach for thermalization and transport.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Temporal entanglement, quasiparticles and the role of interactions

In quantum many-body dynamics admitting a description in terms of non-interacting quasiparticles, the Feynman-Vernon influence matrix (IM), encoding the effect of the system on the evolution of its local subsystems, can be analyzed exactly. For discrete dynamics, the temporal entanglement (TE) of the corresponding IM satisfies an area law, suggesting the possibility of an efficient representation of the IM in terms of matrix-product states. A natural question is whether and how integrable interactions, which preserve stable quasiparticles, affect the behavior of the TE. While a simple semiclassical picture suggests a sublinear growth in time, one can wonder whether interactions may lead to violations of the area law. We address this problem by analyzing quantum quenches in a family of discrete integrable dynamics corresponding to the real-time Trotterization of the interacting XXZ Heisenberg model. By means of an analytical solution at the dual-unitary point and numerical calculations for generic values of the system parameters, we provide evidence that, away from the non-interacting limit, the TE displays a logarithmic growth in time, thus violating the area law. Our findings highlight the non-trivial role of interactions, and raise interesting questions on the possibility to efficiently simulate the local dynamics of interacting integrable systems.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2021

Characterizing many-body localization via exact disorder-averaged quantum noise

Many-body localized (MBL) phases of disordered quantum many-particle systems have a number of unique properties, including failure to act as a thermal bath and protection of quantum coherence. Studying MBL is complicated by the effects of rare ergodic regions, necessitating large system sizes and averaging over many disorder configurations. Here, building on the Feynman-Vernon theory of quantum baths, we characterize the quantum noise that a disordered spin system exerts on its parts via an influence matrix (IM). In this approach, disorder averaging is implemented exactly, and the thermodynamic-limit IM obeys a self-consistency equation. Viewed as a wavefunction in the space of trajectories of an individual spin, the IM exhibits slow scaling of temporal entanglement in the MBL phase. This enables efficient matrix product states computations to obtain temporal correlations, providing a benchmark for quantum simulations of non-equilibrium matter. The IM quantum noise formulation provides an alternative starting point for novel rigorous studies of MBL.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2021

Scaling of temporal entanglement in proximity to integrability

Describing dynamics of quantum many-body systems is a formidable challenge due to rapid generation of quantum entanglement between remote degrees of freedom. A promising approach to tackle this challenge, which has been proposed recently, is to characterize the quantum dynamics of a many-body system and its properties as a bath via the Feynman-Vernon influence matrix (IM), which is an operator in the space of time trajectories of local degrees of freedom. Physical understanding of the general scaling of the IM's temporal entanglement and its relation to basic dynamical properties is highly incomplete to present day. In this Article, we analytically compute the exact IM for a family of integrable Floquet models - the transverse-field kicked Ising chain - finding a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-like "wavefunction" on the Schwinger-Keldysh contour with algebraically decaying correlations. We demonstrate that the IM exhibits area-law temporal entanglement scaling for all parameter values. Furthermore, the entanglement pattern of the IM reveals the system's phase diagram, exhibiting jumps across transitions between distinct Floquet phases. Near criticality, a non-trivial scaling behavior of temporal entanglement is found. The area-law temporal entanglement allows us to efficiently describe the effects of sizeable integrability-breaking perturbations for long evolution times by using matrix product state methods. This work shows that tensor network methods are efficient in describing the effect of non-interacting baths on open quantum systems, and provides a new approach to studying quantum many-body systems with weakly broken integrability.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Influence functional of many-body systems: temporal entanglement and matrix-product state representation

Feynman-Vernon influence functional (IF) was originally introduced to describe the effect of a quantum environment on the dynamics of an open quantum system. We apply the IF approach to describe quantum many-body dynamics in isolated spin systems, viewing the system as an environment for its local subsystems. While the IF can be computed exactly only in certain many-body models, it generally satisfies a self-consistency equation, provided the system, or an ensemble of systems, are translationally invariant. We view the IF as a fictitious wavefunction in the temporal domain, and approximate it using matrix-product states (MPS). This approach is efficient provided the temporal entanglement of the IF is sufficiently low. We illustrate the versatility of the IF approach by analyzing several models that exhibit a range of dynamical behaviors, from thermalizing to many-body localized. In particular, we study the non-equilibrium dynamics in the quantum Ising model in both Floquet and Hamiltonian settings. We find that temporal entanglement entropy may be significantly lower compared to the spatial entanglement and analyze the IF in the continuous-time limit. We simulate the thermodynamic-limit evolution of local observables in various regimes, including the relaxation of impurities embedded in an infinite-temperature chain, and the long-lived oscillatory dynamics of the magnetization associated with the confinement of excitations. By incorporating disorder-averaging into the formalism, we analyze discrete time-crystalline response using the IF method. In this case, we find that the temporal entanglement entropy scales logarithmically with evolution time. The IF approach offers a new lens on many-body non-equilibrium phenomena, both in ergodic and non-ergodic regimes, connecting the theory of open quantum systems theory to quantum statistical physics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Influence matrix approach to many-body Floquet dynamics

In this work, we introduce an approach to study quantum many-body dynamics, inspired by the Feynman-Vernon influence functional. Focusing on a family of interacting, Floquet spin chains, we consider a Keldysh path-integral description of the dynamics. The central object in our approach is the influence matrix (IM), which describes the effect of the system on the dynamics of a local subsystem. For translationally invariant models, we formulate a self-consistency equation for the influence matrix. For certain special values of the model parameters, we obtain an exact solution which represents a perfect dephaser (PD). Physically, a PD corresponds to a many-body system that acts as a perfectly Markovian bath on itself: at each period, it measures every spin. For the models considered here, we establish that PD points include dual-unitary circuits investigated in recent works. In the vicinity of PD points, the system is not perfectly Markovian, but rather acts as a bath with a short memory time. In this case, we demonstrate that the self-consistency equation can be solved using matrix-product states (MPS) methods, as the IM temporal entanglement is low. A combination of analytical insights and MPS computations allows us to characterize the structure of the influence matrix in terms of an effective "statistical-mechanics" description. We finally illustrate the predictive power of this description by analytically computing how quickly an embedded impurity spin thermalizes. The influence matrix approach formulated here provides an intuitive view of the quantum many-body dynamics problem, opening a path to constructing models of thermalizing dynamics that are solvable or can be efficiently treated by MPS-based methods, and to further characterizing quantum ergodicity or lack thereof.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Thouless Energy Across Many-Body Localization Transition in Floquet Systems

The notion of Thouless energy plays a central role in the theory of Anderson localization. We investigate the scaling of Thouless energy across the many-body localization (MBL) transition in a Floquet model. We use a combination of methods that are reliable on the ergodic side of the transition (e.g., spectral form factor) and methods that work on the MBL side (e.g. typical matrix elements of local operators) to obtain a complete picture of the Thouless energy behavior across the transition. On the ergodic side, the Thouless energy tends to a value independent of system size, while at the transition it becomes comparable to the level spacing. Different probes yield consistent estimates of the Thouless energy in their overlapping regime of applicability, giving the location of the transition point nearly free of finite-size drift. This work establishes a connection between different definitions of Thouless energy in a many-body setting, and yields new insights into the MBL transition in Floquet systems.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2019

Disorder and interaction in chiral chains: Majoranas vs complex fermions

We study the low-energy physics of a chain of Majorana fermions in the presence of interaction and disorder, emphasizing the difference between Majoranas and conventional (complex) fermions. While in the non-interacting limit both models are equivalent (in particular, belong to the same symmetry class BDI and flow towards the same infinite-randomness critical fixed point), their behavior differs drastically once interaction is added. Our density-matrix renormalization group calculations show that the complex-fermion chain remains at the non-interacting fixed point. On the other hand, the Majorana fermion chain experiences a spontaneous symmetry breaking and localizes for repulsive interaction. To explain the instability of the critical Majorana chain with respect to a combined effect of interaction and disorder, we consider interaction as perturbation to the infinite-randomness fixed point and calculate numerically two-wavefunction correlation functions that enter interaction matrix elements. The numerical results supported by analytical arguments exhibit a rich structure of critical eigenstate correlations. This allows us to identify a relevant interaction operator that drives the Majorana chain away from the infinite randomness fixed point. For the case of complex fermions, the interaction is irrelevant.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗