arXiv subjects

Stefan Kehrein

Publications and source records attributed to Stefan Kehrein.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Direct Access to Auger recombination in Graphene

Auger scattering channels are of fundamental importance to describe and understand the non-equilibrium charge carrier dynamics in graphene. While impact excitation increases the number of carriers in the conduction band and has been observed experimentally, direct access to its inverse process, Auger recombination, has so far been elusive. Here, we tackle this problem by applying our novel setup for ultrafast time-resolved photoelectron momentum microscopy. Our approach gives simultaneous access to charge carrier dynamics at all energies and in-plane momenta within the linearly dispersive Dirac cones. We thus provide direct evidence for Auger recombination on a sub-10~fs timescale by identifying transient energy- and momentum-dependent populations far above the excitation energy. We compare our results with model calculations of scattering processes in the Dirac cone to support our experimental findings.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2020

Electromagnetic dressing of the electron energy spectrum of Au(111) at high momenta

Light-engineering of quantum materials via electromagnetic dressing is considered an on-demand approach for tailoring electronic band dispersions and even inducing topological phase transitions. For probing such dressed bands, photoemission spectroscopy is an ideal tool, and we employ here a novel experiment based on ultrafast photoemission momentum microscopy. Using this setup, we measure the in-plane momentum-dependent intensity fingerprints of the electromagnetically-dressed sidebands from a Au(111) surface for s- and p-polarized infrared driving. We find that at metal surfaces, due to screening of the driving laser, the contribution from Floquet-Bloch bands is negligible, and the dressed bands are dominated by the laser-assisted photoelectric effect. Also, we find that in contrast to general expectations, s-polarized light can dress free-electron states at large photoelectron momenta. Our results show that the dielectric response of the material must carefully be taken into account when using photoemission for the identification of light-engineered electronic band structures.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Entanglement correction due to local interactions in many-body systems

The correction to the area law for the bipartite min-entanglement entropy of weakly and locally interacting fermions is calculated based on a perturbative extension of the flow equation holography method. Explicit calculations for the one- and two-dimensional case (and similarly for higher dimensions) show that the leading correction to the entanglement entropy of non-interacting fermions up to $U^2$ in the interaction strength does not change the scaling, but only affects the pre-factor of the leading logarithmic term multiplying it by the quasiparticle residue. A term sub-leading to the area law is also present. It is proportional to $U^2$ in the interaction strength and scales linearly with the system size.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Out of equilibrium mean field dynamics in the transverse field Ising model

We investigate the quench dynamics of the transverse field Ising model on a finite fully connected lattice as a prime example of non-equilibrium mean field dynamics. Using a rate function approach we compute the leading order corrections to the mean field behavior analytically. Our focus is threefold: i) We analyze the validity of the mean field approximation and observe that deviations can occur quickly even for large systems. ii) We study the variance of the order parameter and identify four qualitative different regions that cannot be distinguished by solely looking at its mean. iii) We derive the complete entanglement Hamiltonian for a bipartition of the lattice, which remarkably turns out to be a time-dependent harmonic oscillator within the validity of the mean field analysis.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2019

Tripartite information, scrambling, and the role of Hilbert space partitioning in quantum lattice models

For the characterization of the dynamics in quantum many-body systems the question how information spreads and becomes distributed over the constituent degrees of freedom is of fundamental interest. The delocalization of information under many-body dynamics has been dubbed scrambling and out-of-time-order correlators were proposed to probe this behavior. In this work we investigate the time-evolution of tripartite information as a natural operator-independent measure of scrambling, which quantifies to which extent the initially localized information can only be recovered by global measurements. Studying the dynamics of quantum lattice models with tunable integrability breaking we demonstrate that in contrast to quadratic models generic interacting systems scramble information irrespective of the chosen partitioning of the Hilbert space, which justifies the characterization as scrambler. Without interactions the dynamics of tripartite information in momentum space reveals unambiguously the absence of scrambling.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Prethermalization of density-density correlations after an interaction quench in the Hubbard model

In weakly perturbed systems that are close to integrability, thermalization can be delayed by the formation of prethermalization plateaus. We study the build-up of density-density correlations after a weak interaction quench in the Hubbard model in $d > 1$ dimensions using unitary perturbation theory. Starting from a pre-quench state at temperature $T$, we show that the prethermalization values of the post-quench correlations are equal to the equilibrium values of the interacting model at the same temperature $T$. This is explained by the local character of density-density correlations.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Semiclassical echo dynamics in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model

The existence of a quantum butterfly effect in the form of exponential sensitivity to small perturbations has been under debate for a long time. Lately, this question gained increased interest due to the proposal to probe chaotic dynamics and scrambling using out-of-time-order correlators. In this work we study echo dynamics in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model under effective time reversal in a semiclassical approach. We demonstrate that small imperfections introduced in the time-reversal procedure result in an exponential divergence from the perfect echo, which allows to identify a Lyapunov exponent $λ_L$. In particular, we find that $λ_L$ is twice the Lyapunov exponent of the semiclassical equations of motion. This behavior is attributed to the growth of an out-of-time-order double commutator that resembles an out-of-time-order correlator.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2019

Exact description of the boundary theory of the Kitaev Toric Code with open boundary conditions

In this work we consider the Kitaev Toric Code with specific open boundary conditions. Such a physical system has a highly degenerate ground state determined by the degrees of freedom localised at the boundaries. We can write down an explicit expression for the ground state of this model. Based on this, the entanglement properties of the model are studied for two types of bipartition: one, where the subsystem A is completely contained in B; and the second, where the boundary of the system is shared between A and B. In the former configuration, the entanglement entropy is the same as for the periodic boundary condition case, which means that the bulk is completely decoupled from the boundary on distances larger than the correlation length. In the latter, deviations from the torus configuration appear due to the edge states and lead to an increase of the entropy. We then determine an effective theory for the boundary of the system. In the case where we apply a small magnetic field as a perturbation the degrees of freedom on the boundary acquire a dispersion relation. The system can there be described by a Hamiltonian of the Ising type with a generic spin-exchange term.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Irreversible dynamics in quantum many-body systems

Irreversibility, despite being a necessary condition for thermalization, still lacks a sound understanding in the context of isolated quantum many-body systems. In this work we approach this question by studying the behavior of generic many-body systems under imperfect effective time reversal, where the imperfection is introduced as a perturbation of the many-body state at the point of time reversal. Based on numerical simulations of the full quantum dynamics we demonstrate that observable echos occurring in this setting decay exponentially with a rate that is independent of the perturbation; hence, the sensitivity to perturbations is intrinsic to the system meaning that the dynamics is effectively irreversible.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2018

Environmental effects in quantum annealing

For quantum annealing, as opposed to circuit based quantum computing, the solution to a computational problem is encoded in the ground state of a quantum system. Therefore its susceptibility to environmental effects is a different but not less important open question essential to a scalable implementation. In this work we use renormalization group techniques to study the effect of Ohmic baths in a regime typical for practical adiabatic quantum computation. We show qualitative change to the effective Hamiltonian as well as the reduced qubit density matrix encoding entanglement between system and bath. An effective dephasing of the reduced density matrix limits the extractable information from many qubit entangled groundstates. We find that the annealing process is no longer restricted to the qubits and discuss possible drawbacks or benefits of annealing in the combined system--bath states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Analysis of the buildup of spatiotemporal correlations and their bounds outside of the light cone

In non-relativistic quantum theories the Lieb-Robinson bound defines an effective light cone with exponentially small tails outside of it. In this work we use it to derive a bound for the time evolution of the correlation function of two local disjoint observables if the initial state has a power-law decay. We show that the exponent of the power-law of the bound is identical to the initial (equilibrium) decay. We explicitly verify this result by studying the full dynamics of the susceptibilities and correlations in the exactly solvable Luttinger model after a sudden quench from the non-interacting to the interacting model.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2018

Relaxation of photoexcitations in polaron-induced magnetic microstructures

We investigate the evolution of a photoexcitation in correlated materials over a wide range of time scales. The system studied is a one-dimensional model of a manganite with correlated electron, spin, orbital, and lattice degrees of freedom, which we relate to the three-dimensional material Pr$_{1-x}$Ca$_{x}$MnO$_3$. The ground-state phases for the entire composition range are determined and rationalized by a coarse-grained polaron model. At half-doping a pattern of antiferromagnetically coupled Zener polarons is realized. Using time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group (tDMRG), we treat the electronic quantum dynamics following the excitation. The emergence of quasiparticles is addressed, and the relaxation of the nonequilibrium quasiparticle distribution is investigated via a linearized quantum-Boltzmann equation. Our approach shows that the magnetic microstructure caused by the Zener polarons leads to an increase of the relaxation times of the excitation.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Flow Equation Holography

The Ryu-Takayanagi conjecture establishes a remarkable connection between quantum systems and geometry. Specifically, it relates the entanglement entropy to minimal surfaces within the setting of AdS/CFT correspondence. This Letter shows how this idea can be generalised to generic quantum many-body systems within a perturbative expansion where the region whose entanglement properties one is interested in is weakly coupled to the rest of the system. A simple expression is derived that relates a unitary disentangling flow in an emergent RG-like direction to the min-entropy of the region under consideration. Explicit calculations for critical free fermions in one and two dimensions illustrate this relation.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Thermalization rates in the one dimensional Hubbard model with next-to-nearest neighbor hopping

We consider a fermionic Hubbard chain with an additional next-to-nearest neighbor hopping term. We study the thermalization rates of the quasi-momentum distribution function within a quantum Boltzmann equation approach. We find that the thermalization rates are proportional to the square of the next-to-nearest neighbor hopping: Even weak next-to-nearest neighbor hopping in addition to nearest neighbor hopping leads to thermalization in a two-particle scattering quantum Boltzmann equation in one dimension. We also investigate the temperature dependence of the thermalization rates, which away from half filling become exponentially small for small temperature of the final thermalized distribution.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2016

Effective time reversal and echo dynamics in the transverse field Ising model

The question of thermalisation in closed quantum many-body systems has received a lot of attention in the past few years. An intimately related question is whether a closed quantum system shows irreversible dynamics. However, irreversibility and what we actually mean by this in a quantum many-body system with unitary dynamics has been explored very little. In this work we investigate the dynamics of the Ising model in a transverse magnetic field involving an imperfect effective time reversal. We propose a definition of irreversibility based on the echo peak decay of observables. Inducing the effective time reversal by different protocols we find algebraic decay of the echo peak heights or an ever persisting echo peak indicating that the dynamics in this model is well reversible.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2015

Universal nonanalytic behavior of the Hall conductance in a Chern insulator at the topologically driven nonequilibrium phase transition

We study the Hall conductance of a Chern insulator after a global quench of the Hamiltonian. The Hall conductance in the long time limit is obtained by applying the linear response theory to the diagonal ensemble. It is expressed as the integral of the Berry curvature weighted by the occupation number over the Brillouin zone. We identify a topologically driven nonequilibrium phase transition, which is indicated by the nonanalyticity of the Hall conductance as a function of the energy gap m_f in the post-quench Hamiltonian H_f. The topological invariant for the quenched state is the winding number of the Green's function W, which equals the Chern number for the ground state of H_f. In the limit that m_f goes to zero, the derivative of the Hall conductance with respect to m_f is proportional to ln(|m_f|), with the constant of proportionality being the ratio of the change of W at m_f = 0 to the energy gap in the initial state. This nonanalytic behavior is universal in two-band Chern insulators such as the Dirac model, the Haldane model, or the Kitaev honeycomb model in the fermionic basis.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

Quantum Quench Dynamics in the Transverse Field Ising Model at Non-zero Temperatures

The recently discovered dynamical phase transition denotes non-analytic behavior in the real time evolution of quantum systems in the thermodynamic limit and has been shown to occur in different systems at zero temperature [Heyl et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 135704 (2013)]. In this paper we extend the analysis to non-zero temperature by studying a generalized form of the Loschmidt echo, the work distribution function, of a quantum quench in the transverse field Ising model. Although the quantitative behavior at non-zero temperatures still displays features derived from the zero temperature non-analyticities, it is shown that in this model dynamical phase transitions do not exist if $T>0$. This is a consequence of the system being initialized in a thermal state. Moreover, we elucidate how the Tasaki-Crooks-Jarzynski relation can be exploited as a symmetry relation for a global quench or to obtain the change of the equilibrium free energy density.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2015

Representation of excited states and topological order of the toric code in MERA

The holographic duality relates a field theory to a theory of (quantum) gravity in one dimension more. The extra dimension represents the scale of the RG transformation in the field theory. It has been conjectured that the tensor networks which arise during the real space renormalization procedure like the multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA) are a discretized version of the background of the gravity theory. We strive to contribute to make this conjecture testable by considering an explicit and tractable example, namely the dual network of the toric code, for which MERA can be performed analytically. We examine how this construction can be extended to include excited states. Furthermore, we show how to calculate topological entanglement entropy from the geometry of MERA. This method is expected to generalize to systems with generic entanglement structure.

cond-mat.str-el↗