arXiv subjects

S. J. Thomson

Publications and source records attributed to S. J. Thomson.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Quench Spectroscopy of Magnetic Excitations on a Superconducting Quantum Processor

The elementary excitation spectrum of a many-body quantum system encodes many key properties, including phenomena as diverse as transport, thermalisation and ground state structure. Excitation spectra of strongly correlated systems are typically encoded in dynamical structure factors, which are demanding to measure experimentally and challenging to compute classically. Here we use quench spectroscopy on a superconducting quantum processor to extract excitation spectra of spin chains of $L=101$ spins. By tailoring the combination of quench protocol and observable, we selectively access distinct excitation sectors across several phases of the spin-$1/2$ XXZ chain, resolving free magnons, multi-magnon bound states, and two-spinon continua. Notably, we demonstrate that the protocol does not rely on ground state preparation: in the classically challenging gapless regime, we extract spectra directly from the quench dynamics of easily prepared product states, a procedure that is natural and straightforward on quantum hardware. Our work establishes quench spectroscopy as a fast and flexible probe of many-body excitation spectra on digital quantum hardware, introduces a novel quench protocol that does not require costly state preparation routines, and provides a scalable route towards regimes where classical simulation may become intractable.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Imaginary Time Spectral Transforms for Excited State Preparation

Excited states of many-body quantum systems play a key role in a wide range of physical and chemical phenomena. Despite this, there is a notable lack of scalable algorithms capable of preparing highly excited eigenstates. To address this challenge, we introduce a general approach that directly targets eigenstates near a chosen energy, applicable to both classical and quantum simulation frameworks. Our approach combines the shift-invert mechanism with imaginary time evolution, enabling the construction of excited states of large many-body quantum systems. We demonstrate the technique classically by computing mid-spectrum eigenstates of disordered spin chains with up to $L=128$ sites. Based on this, we propose a hybrid scheme compatible with near-term quantum hardware.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Local integrals of motion and the stability of many-body localisation in Wannier-Stark potentials

Many-body localisation in disordered systems in one spatial dimension is typically understood in terms of the existence of an extensive number of (quasi)-local integrals of motion (LIOMs) which are thought to decay exponentially with distance and interact only weakly with one another. By contrast, little is known about the form of the integrals of motion in disorder-free systems which exhibit localisation. Here, we explicitly compute the LIOMs for disorder-free localised systems, focusing on the case of a linearly increasing potential. We show that while in the absence of interactions, the LIOMs decay faster than exponentially, the addition of interactions leads to the formation of a slow-decaying plateau at short distances. We study how the localisation properties of the LIOMs depend on the linear slope, finding that there is a significant finite-size dependence, and present evidence that adding a weak harmonic potential does not result in typical many-body localisation phenomenology. By contrast, the addition of disorder has a qualitatively different effect, dramatically modifying the properties of the LIOMS.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2023

Measuring out quasi-local integrals of motion from entanglement

Quasi-local integrals of motion are a key concept underpinning the modern understanding of many-body localisation, an intriguing phenomenon in which interactions and disorder come together. Despite the existence of several numerical ways to compute them - and astoundingly in the light of the observation that much of the phenomenology of many properties can be derived from them - it is not obvious how to directly measure aspects of them in real quantum simulations; in fact, the smoking gun of their experimental observation is arguably still missing. In this work, we propose a way to extract the real-space properties of such quasi-local integrals of motion based on a spatially-resolved entanglement probe able to distinguish Anderson from many-body localisation from non-equilibrium dynamics. We complement these findings with a new rigorous entanglement bound and compute the relevant quantities using tensor networks. We demonstrate that the entanglement gives rise to a well-defined length scale that can be measured in experiments.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2023

Unraveling long-time quantum dynamics using flow equations

The study of many-body quantum dynamics in strongly-correlated systems is extremely challenging. To date few numerical methods exist which are capable of simulating the non-equilibrium dynamics of two-dimensional quantum systems, in part reflecting complexity theoretic obstructions. In this work, we present a new technique able to overcome this obstacle, by combining continuous unitary flow techniques with the newly developed method of scrambling transforms. We overcome the prejudice that approximately diagonalizing the Hamiltonian cannot lead to reliable predictions for relatively long times. To the contrary, we show that the method works well in both localized and delocalized phases, and makes reliable predictions for a number of quantities including infinite-temperature autocorrelation functions. We complement our findings with rigorous incremental bounds on the truncation error. This approach shows that in practice, the exploration of intermediate-scale time evolution may be more feasible than is commonly assumed, challenging near-term quantum simulators.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Localisation and Sub-Diffusive Transport in Quantum Spin Chains With Dilute Disorder

It is widely believed that many-body localisation in one dimension is fragile and can be easily destroyed by thermal inclusions, however there are still many open questions regarding the stability of the localised phase and under what conditions it breaks down. Here I construct models with dilute disorder, which interpolate between translationally invariant and fully random models, in order to study the breakdown of localisation. This opens up the possibility to controllably increase the density of thermal regions and examine the breakdown of localisation as this density is increased. At strong disorder, the numerical results are consistent with commonly-used diagnostics for localisation even when the concentration of thermalising regions is high. At moderate disorder, I present evidence for slow dynamics and sub-diffusive transport across a large region of the phase diagram, suggestive of a `bad metal' phase. This suggests that dilute disorder may be a useful effective model for studying Griffiths effects in many-body localisation, and perhaps also in a wider class of disordered systems.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2022

Local Integrals of Motion in Quasiperiodic Many-Body Localized Systems

Local integrals of motion play a central role in the understanding of many-body localization in many-body quantum systems in one dimension subject to a random external potential, but the question of how these local integrals of motion change in a deterministic quasiperiodic potential is one that has received significantly less attention. Here we develop a powerful new implementation of the continuous unitary transform formalism and use this method to directly compute both the effective Hamiltonian and the local integrals of motion for many-body quantum systems subject to a quasiperiodic potential. We show that the effective interactions between local integrals of motion retain a strong fingerprint of the underlying quasiperiodic potential, exhibiting sharp features at distances associated with the incommensurate wavelength used to generate the potential. Furthermore, the local integrals of motion themselves may be expressed in terms of an operator expansion which allows us to estimate the critical strength of quasiperiodic potential required to lead to a localization/delocalization transition, by means of a finite size scaling analysis.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2022

Disorder-induced spin-charge separation in the 1-D Hubbard model

Many-body localisation is believed to be generically unstable in quantum systems with continuous non-Abelian symmetries, even in the presence of strong disorder. Breaking these symmetries can stabilise the localised phase, leading to the emergence of an extensive number of quasi-locally conserved quantities known as local integrals of motion, or $l$-bits. Using a sophisticated non-perturbative technique based on continuous unitary transforms, we investigate the one-dimensional Hubbard model subject to both spin and charge disorder, compute the associated $l$-bits and demonstrate that the disorder gives rise to a novel form of spin-charge separation. We examine the role of symmetries in delocalising the spin and charge degrees of freedom, and show that while symmetries generally lead to delocalisation through multi-particle resonant processes, certain subsets of states appear stable.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2022

Entanglement spectrum and quantum phase diagram of the long-range XXZ chain

Entanglement is a central feature of many-body quantum systems and plays a unique role in quantum phase transitions. In many cases, the entanglement spectrum, which represents the spectrum of the density matrix of a bipartite system, contains valuable information beyond the sole entanglement entropy. Here we investigate the entanglement spectrum of the long-range XXZ model. We show that within the critical phase it exhibits a remarkable self-similarity. The breakdown of self-similarity and the transition away from a Luttinger liquid is consistent with renormalization group theory. Combining the two, we are able to determine the quantum phase diagram of the model and locate the corresponding phase transitions. Our results are confirmed by numerically-exact calculations using tensor-network techniques. Moreover, we show that the self-similar rescaling extends to the geometrical entanglement as well as the Luttinger parameter in the critical phase. Our results pave the way to further studies of entanglement properties in long-range quantum models.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Spreading of Correlations and Entanglement in the Long-Range Transverse Ising Chain

Whether long-range interactions allow for a form of causality in non-relativistic quantum models remains an open question with far-reaching implications for the propagation of information and thermalization processes. Here, we study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the one-dimensional transverse Ising model with algebraic long-range exchange coupling. Using a state of the art tensor-network approach, complemented by analytic calculations and considering various observables, we show that a weak form of causality emerges, characterized by non-universal dynamical exponents. While the local spin and spin correlation causal edges are sub-ballistic, the causal region has a rich internal structure, which, depending on the observable, displays ballistic or super-ballistic features. In contrast, the causal region of entanglement entropy is featureless and its edge is always ballistic, irrespective of the interaction range. Our results shed light on the propagation of information in long-range interacting lattice models and pave the way to future experiments, which are discussed.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Finding the phase diagram of strongly-correlated disordered bosons using quantum quenches

The question of how the low-energy properties of disordered quantum systems may be connected to exotic localization phenomena at high energy is a key open question in the context of quantum glasses and many-body localization. In arXiv:2105.05774 we have shown that key features of the excitation spectrum of a disordered system can be efficiently probed from out-of-equilibrium dynamics following a quantum quench, providing distinctive signatures of the various phases. Here, we extend this work by providing a more in-depth study of the behavior of the quench spectral functions associated to different observables and investigating an extended parameter regime. We provide a detailed introduction to quench spectroscopy for disordered systems and show how spectral properties can be probed using both local operators and two-point correlation functions. We benchmark the technique using the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of a random external potential, focusing on the low-lying excitations, and demonstrate that quench spectroscopy can distinguish the Mott insulator, superfluid, and Bose glass phases. We then explicitly reconstruct the zero-temperature phase diagram of the disordered Bose-Hubbard at fixed filling using two independent methods, both experimentally accessible via time-of-flight imaging and quantum gas microscopy respectively, and demonstrate that quench spectroscopy can give valuable insights as to the distribution of rare regions within disordered systems.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2021

Quench Spectroscopy of a Disordered Quantum System

The characterization of excitations in disordered quantum systems is a central issue in connection with glass physics and many-body localization. Here, we show that quench spectroscopy of a disordered model, as realized from its out-of-equilibrium dynamics following a global quench, allows us to fully characterize the spectral properties of the disordered phases. In the Bose-Hubbard model, a clear signature of gapless excitations in momentum-resolved spectroscopy enables us to accurately locate the Mott insulator to Bose glass transition, while the presence or absence of a well-defined soundlike mode distinguishes the superfluid from the Bose glass phase. Moreover, spatially-resolved spectroscopy provides local spectral properties and allows us to extract the typical spacing of gapless regions, giving a second independent way to uniquely identify all three phases. Our findings have far-ranging implications for a variety of experimental platforms, and offer a powerful and versatile probe of the low-energy phases of disordered systems.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2021

Flow Equations for Disordered Floquet Systems

In this work, we present a new approach to disordered, periodically driven (Floquet) quantum many-body systems based on flow equations. Specifically, we introduce a continuous unitary flow of Floquet operators in an extended Hilbert space, whose fixed point is both diagonal and time-independent, allowing us to directly obtain the Floquet modes. We first apply this method to a periodically driven Anderson insulator, for which it is exact, and then extend it to driven many-body localized systems within a truncated flow equation ansatz. In particular we compute the emergent Floquet local integrals of motion that characterise a periodically driven many-body localized phase. We demonstrate that the method remains well-controlled in the weakly-interacting regime, and allows us to access larger system sizes than accessible by numerically exact methods, paving the way for studies of two-dimensional driven many-body systems.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2020

Quasi-Many-Body Localization of Interacting Fermions with Long-Range Couplings

A number of experimental platforms for quantum simulations of disordered quantum matter, from dipolar systems to trapped ions, involve degrees of freedom which are coupled by power-law decaying hoppings or interactions, yet the interplay of disorder and interactions in these systems is far less understood than in their short-ranged counterpart. Here we consider a prototype model of interacting fermions with disordered long-ranged hoppings and interactions, and use the flow equation approach to map out its dynamical phase diagram as a function of hopping and interaction exponents. We demonstrate that the flow equation technique is ideally suited to problems involving long-range couplings due to its ability to accurately simulate very large system sizes. We show that, at large on-site disorder and for short-range interactions, a transition from a delocalized phase to a quasi many-body localized (MBL) phase exists as the hopping range is decreased. This quasi-MBL phase is characterized by intriguing properties such as a set of emergent conserved quantities which decay algebraically with distance. Surprisingly we find that a crossover between delocalized and quasi-MBL phases survives even in the presence of long-range interactions.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2020

Local quench spectroscopy of many-body quantum systems

Quench spectroscopy is a relatively new method which enables the investigation of spectral properties of many-body quantum systems by monitoring the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of real-space observables after a quench. So far the approach has been devised for global quenches or using local engineering of momentum-resolved excitations. Here, we extend the quench spectroscopy method to local quenches. We show that it allows us to extract quantitative information about global properties of the system, and in particular the elementary excitation spectrum. Using state-of-the-art numerical methods, we simulate the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a variety of quantum systems following various local quench protocols and demonstrate a general scheme for designing an appropriate local quench protocol for any chosen model. We provide detailed examples of how the local quench protocol can be realised in realistic current generation experiments, including ultracold atomic gases and trapped ion systems.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Quantum quenches in isolated quantum glasses out of equilibrium

In this work, we address the question of how a closed quantum system thermalises in the presence of a random external potential. By investigating the quench dynamics of the isolated quantum spherical $p$-spin model, a paradigmatic model of a mean-field glass, we aim to shed new light on this complex problem. Employing a closed-time Schwinger-Keldysh path integral formalism, we first initialise the system in a random, infinite-temperature configuration and allow it to equilibrate in contact with a thermal bath before switching off the bath and performing a quench. We find evidence that increasing the strength of either the interactions or the quantum fluctuations can act to lower the effective temperature of the isolated system and stabilise glassy behaviour.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2020

Dynamics of Disordered Quantum Systems Using Flow Equations

In this manuscript, we show how flow equation methods can be used to study localisation in disordered quantum systems, and particularly how to use this approach to obtain the non-equilibrium dynamical evolution of observables. We review the formalism, based on continuous unitary transforms, and apply it to a non-interacting yet non trivial one dimensional disordered quantum systems, the power-law random banded matrix model whose dynamics is studied across the localisation-delocalisation transition. We show how this method can be used to compute quench dynamics of simple observables, demonstrate how this formalism provides a natural framework to understand operator spreading and show how to construct complex objects such as correlation functions. We end with an outlook of unsolved problems and ways in which the method can be further developed in the future. Our goal is to motivate further adoption of the flow equation method, and to equip and encourage others to build on this technique as a means to study localisation phenomena in disordered quantum systems.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2017

Time Evolution of Many-Body Localized Systems with the Flow Equation Approach

The interplay between interactions and quenched disorder can result in rich dynamical quantum phenomena far from equilibrium, particularly when many-body localization prevents the system from full thermalization. With the aim of tackling this interesting regime, here we develop a semi-analytical flow equation approach to study time evolution of strongly disordered interacting quantum systems. We apply this technique to a prototype model of interacting spinless fermions in a random on-site potential in both one and two dimensions. Key results include (i) an explicit construction of the local integrals of motion that characterize the many-body localized phase in one dimension, ultimately connecting the microscopic model to phenomenological descriptions, (ii) calculation of these quantities for the first time in two dimensions, and (iii) an investigation of the real-time dynamics in the localized phase which reveals the crucial role of $l$-bit interactions for enhancing dephasing and relaxation.

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