arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Tomaz Prosen.
We propose a simple classical dynamical model of a thermoelectric (or thermochemical) heat engine based on a pair of ideal gas containers connected by two unequal scattering channels. The model is solved analytically and it is shown that a suitable combination of parameters can be chosen such that the engine operates at Carnot's efficiency.
The complexity of representation of operators in quantum mechanics can be characterized by the operator space entanglement entropy (OSEE). We show that in the homogeneous Heisenberg XY spin 1/2 chains the OSEE for initial local operators grows at most logarithmically with time. The prefactor in front of the logarithm generally depends only on the number of stationary points of the quasi-particle dispersion relation and for the XY model changes from 1/3 to 2/3 exactly at the point of quantum phase transition to long-range magnetic correlations in the non-equilibrium steady state. In addition, we show that the presence of a small disorder triggers a saturation of the OSEE.
We demonstrate the possibility to build a thermoelectric engine using a one dimensional gas of molecules with unequal masses and hard-point interaction. Most importantly, we show that the efficiency of this engine is determined by a new parameter YT which is different from the well known figure of merit ZT. Even though the efficiency of this particular model is low, our results shed new light on the problem and open the possibility to build efficient thermoelectric engines.
We study the Loschmidt echo F(t) for a class of dynamical systems showing critical chaos. Using a kicked rotor with singular potential as a prototype model, we found that the classical echo shows a gap (initial drop) 1-F_g where F_g scales as F_g(α, ε, η)= f_cl(χ_cl equivη^{3-α}/ε); αis the order of singularity of the potential, ηis the spread of the initial phase space density and εis the perturbation strength. Instead, the quantum echo gap is insensitive to α, described by a scaling law F_g = f_q(χ_q = η^2/ε) which can be captured by a Random Matrix Theory modeling of critical systems. We trace this quantum-classical discrepancy to strong diffraction effects that dominate the dynamics.
We show that, when a finite anisotropic Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain in the gapped regime is driven far from equilibrium, oppositely polarized ferromagnetic domains build up at the edges of the chain, thus suppressing quantum spin transport. As a consequence, a negative differential conductivity regime arises, where increasing the driving decreases the current. The above results are explained in terms of magnon localization and are shown to be structurally stable against breaking of integrability.
In this paper we study in detail, both analytically and numerically, the dynamical properties of the triangle map, a piecewise parabolic automorphism of the two-dimensional torus, for different values of the two independent parameters defining the map. The dynamics is studied numerically by means of two different symbolic encoding schemes, both relying on the fact that it maps polygons to polygons: in the first scheme we consider dynamically generated partitions made out of suitable sets of disjoint polygons, in the second we consider the standard binary partition of the torus induced by the discontinuity set. These encoding schemes are studied in detail and shown to be compatible, although not equivalent. The ergodic properties of the triangle map are then investigated in terms of the Markov transition matrices associated to the above schemes and furthermore compared to the spectral properties of the Koopman operator in L2(T2). Finally, a stochastic version of the triangle map is introduced and studied. A simple heuristic analysis of the latter yields the correct statistical and scaling behaviours of the correlation functions of the original map.
The Lindblad master equation for an arbitrary quadratic system of n fermions is solved explicitly in terms of diagonalization of a 4n x 4n matrix, provided that all Lindblad bath operators are linear in the fermionic variables. The method is applied to the explicit construction of non-equilibrium steady states and the calculation of asymptotic relaxation rates in the far from equilibrium problem of heat and spin transport in a nearest neighbor Heisenberg XY spin 1/2 chain in a transverse magnetic field.
Time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method with a matrix product ansatz is employed for explicit computation of non-equilibrium steady state density operators of several integrable and non-integrable quantum spin chains, which are driven far from equilibrium by means of Markovian couplings to external baths at the two ends. It is argued that even though the time-evolution can not be simulated efficiently due to fast entanglement growth, the steady states in and out of equilibrium can be typically accurately approximated, so that chains of length of the order n ~ 100 are accessible. Our results are demonstrated by performing explicit simulations of steady states and calculations of energy/spin densities/currents in several problems of heat and spin transport in quantum spin chains. Previously conjectured relation between quantum chaos and normal transport is re-confirmed with high acurracy on much larger systems.
Rigorous lower bound on the time-average of the autocorrelation function of an arbitrary L^1 observable is proven in terms of conserved quantities and ergodic decompositions of the Hamiltonian dynamics. Improvements with respect to the bounds given by Mazur and Suzuki are discussed.
Using quantization in the Fock space of operators we compute the non-equilibrium steady state in an open Heisenberg XY spin 1/2 chain of finite but large size coupled to Markovian baths at its ends. Numerical and theoretical evidence is given for a far from equilibrium quantum phase transition with spontaneous emergence of long-range order in spin-spin correlation functions, characterized by a transition from saturation to linear growth with the size of the entanglement entropy in operator space.
We study quantum correlations and complexity of simulation, characterized by quantum mutual information and entanglement entropy in operator space respectively, for thermal states in critical, non-critical and quantum chaotic spin chains. A simple general relation between the two quantities is proposed. We show that in all cases mutual information and entanglement entropy saturate with the system size, whereas as a function of the inverse temperature, we find logarithmic divergences for critical cases and uniform bounds in non-critical cases. A simple efficient quasi-exact method for computation of arbitrary entropy related quantities in thermalized XY spin chains is proposed.
We numerically investigate Heisenberg XXZ spin-1/2 chain in a spatially random static magnetic field. We find that tDMRG simulations of time evolution can be performed efficiently, namely the dimension of matrices needed to efficiently represent the time-evolution increases linearly with time and entanglement entropies for typical chain bipartitions increase logarithmically. As a result, we show that for large enough random fields infinite temperature spin-spin correlation function displays exponential localization in space indicating insulating behavior of the model.
We study the problem of thermoelectricity and propose a simple microscopic mechanism for the increase of thermoelectric efficiency. We consider the cross transport of particles and energy in open classical ergodic billiards. We show that, in the linear response regime, where we find exact expressions for all transport coefficients, the thermoelectric efficiency of ideal ergodic gases can approach Carnot efficiency for sufficiently complex charge carrier molecules. Our results are clearly demonstrated with a simple numerical simulation of a Lorentz gas of particles with internal rotational degrees of freedom.
We study the properties of a two-body random matrix ensemble for distinguishable spins. We require the ensemble to be invariant under the group of local transformations and analyze a parametrization in terms of the group parameters and the remaining parameters associated with the "entangling" part of the interaction. We then specialize to a spin chain with nearest neighbour interactions and numerically find a new type of quantum phase transition related to the strength of a random external field i.e. the time reversal breaking one body interaction term.
The entanglement content of high-dimensional random pure states is almost maximal, nevertheless, we show that, due to the complexity of such states, the detection of their entanglement using witness operators is rather difficult. We discuss the case of unknown random states, and the case of known random states for which we can optimize the entanglement witness. Moreover, we show that coarse graining, modeled by considering mixtures of m random states instead of pure ones, leads to a decay in the entanglement detection probability exponential with m. Our results also allow to explain the emergence of classicality in coarse grained quantum chaotic dynamics.
Linear chains of quantum scatterers are studied in the process of lengthening, which is treated and analysed as a discrete dynamical system defined over the manifold of scattering matrices. Elementary properties of such dynamics relate the transport through the chain to the spectral properties of individual scatterers. For a single-scattering channel case some new light is shed on known transport properties of disordered and noisy chains, whereas translationally invariant case can be studied analytically in terms of a simple deterministic dynamical map. The many-channel case was studied numerically by examining the statistical properties of scatterers that correspond to a certain type of transport of the chain i.e. ballistic or (partially) localised.
The efficiency of time dependent density matrix renormalization group methods is intrinsically connected with the rate of entanglement growth. We introduce a new measure of entanglement in the space of operators and show, for transverse Ising spin 1/2 chain, that the simulation of observables, contrary to simulation of typical pure quantum states, is efficient for initial local operators. For initial operators with a finite index in Majorana representation, the operator space entanglement entropy saturates with time to a level which is calculated analytically, while for initial operators with infinite index the growth of operator space entanglement entropy is shown to be logarithmic.
Fidelity decay is studied for quantum many-body systems with a dominant independent particle Hamiltonian resulting e.g. from a mean field theory with a weak two-body interaction. The diagonal terms of the interaction are included in the unperturbed Hamiltonian, while the off-diagonal terms constitute the perturbation that distorts the echo. We give the linear response solution for this problem in a random matrix framework. While the ensemble average shows no surprising behavior, we find that the typical ensemble member as represented by the median displays a very slow fidelity decay known as ``freeze''. Numerical calculations confirm this result and show, that the ground state even on average displays the freeze. This may contribute to explanation of the ``unreasonable'' success of mean field theories.