arXiv subjects

Vincenzo Alba

Publications and source records attributed to Vincenzo Alba.

81 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2012

Entanglement spectrum of the Heisenberg XXZ chain near the ferromagnetic point

We study the entanglement spectrum (ES) of a finite XXZ spin 1/2 chain in the limit Δ-> -1^+ for both open and periodic boundary conditions. At Δ=-1 (ferromagnetic point) the model is equivalent to the Heisenberg ferromagnet and its degenerate ground state manifold is the SU(2) multiplet with maximal total spin. Any state in this so-called "symmetric sector" is an equal weight superposition of all possible spin configurations. In the gapless phase at Δ>-1 this property is progressively lost as one moves away from the Δ=-1 point. We investigate how the ES obtained from the states in this manifold reflects this change, using exact diagonalization and Bethe ansatz calculations. We find that in the limit Δ->-1^+ most of the ES levels show divergent behavior. Moreover, while at Δ=-1 the ES contains no information about the boundaries, for Δ>-1 it depends dramatically on the choice of boundary conditions. For both open and periodic boundary conditions the ES exhibits an elegant multiplicity structure for which we conjecture a combinatorial formula. We also study the entanglement eigenfunctions, i.e. the eigenfunctions of the reduced density matrix. We find that the eigenfunctions corresponding to the non diverging levels mimic the behavior of the state wavefunction, whereas the others show intriguing polynomial structures. Finally we analyze the distribution of the ES levels as the system is detuned away from Δ=-1.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Boundary-locality and perturbative structure of entanglement spectra in gapped systems

The entanglement between two parts of a many-body system can be characterized in detail by the entanglement spectrum. Focusing on gapped phases of one-dimensional systems, we show how this spectrum is dominated by contributions from the boundary between the parts. This contradicts the view of an "entanglement Hamiltonian" as a bulk entity. The boundary-local nature of the entanglement spectrum is clarified through its hierarchical level structure, through the combination of two single-boundary spectra to form a two-boundary spectrum, and finally through consideration of dominant eigenfunctions of the entanglement Hamiltonian. We use the boundary-locality to formulate a perturbative scheme for calculating entanglement spectra.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Entanglement entropy of two disjoint intervals in c=1 theories

We study the scaling of the Renyi entanglement entropy of two disjoint blocks of critical lattice models described by conformal field theories with central charge c=1. We provide the analytic conformal field theory result for the second order Renyi entropy for a free boson compactified on an orbifold describing the scaling limit of the Ashkin-Teller (AT) model on the self-dual line. We have checked this prediction in cluster Monte Carlo simulations of the classical two dimensional AT model. We have also performed extensive numerical simulations of the anisotropic Heisenberg quantum spin-chain with tree-tensor network techniques that allowed to obtain the reduced density matrices of disjoint blocks of the spin-chain and to check the correctness of the predictions for Renyi and entanglement entropies from conformal field theory. In order to match these predictions, we have extrapolated the numerical results by properly taking into account the corrections induced by the finite length of the blocks to the leading scaling behavior.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2010

The three-dimensional gauge-glass model

We investigate the temperature-disorder (T-S) phase diagram of a three-dimensional gauge glass model, which is a cubic-lattice nearest-neighbor XY model with quenched random phase shifts A_xy at the bonds, by numerical Monte Carlo simulations. We consider the uncorrelated phase-shift distribution P(A_xy)\sim \exp[(cos A_xy)/S], which has the pure XY model and the uniform distribution of random shifts as extreme cases at S=0 and S->infty respectively, and which gives rise to equal magnetic and overlap correlation functions when T=S. While the high-temperature phase is always paramagnetic, at low temperatures there is a ferromagnetic phase for weak disorder (small S) and a glassy phase at large disorder (large S). These three phases are separated by transition lines with different magnetic and glassy critical behaviors. The disorder induced by the random shifts turns out to be irrelevant at the paramagnetic-ferromagnetic transition line, where the critical behavior belongs to the 3D XY universality class of pure systems; disorder gives only rise to very slowly decaying scaling corrections. The glassy critical behavior along the finite-temperature paramagnetic-glassy transition line belongs to the gauge-glass universality class, with a quite large critical exponent nu=3.2(4). These transition lines meet at a multicritical point M, located at T=S=0.7840(2). The low-temperature ferromagnetic and glassy phases are separated by a third transition line, from M down to the T=0 axis, which is slightly reentrant.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2010

Entanglement entropy of two disjoint blocks in critical Ising models

We study the scaling of the Renyi and entanglement entropy of two disjoint blocks of critical Ising models, as function of their sizes and separations. We present analytic results based on conformal field theory that are quantitatively checked in numerical simulations of both the quantum spin chain and the classical two dimensional Ising model. Theoretical results match the ones obtained from numerical simulations only after taking properly into account the corrections induced by the finite length of the blocks to their leading scaling behavior.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2010

Magnetic and glassy transitions in the square-lattice XY model with random phase shifts

We investigate the magnetic and glassy transitions of the square-lattice XY model in the presence of random phase shifts. We consider two different random-shift distributions: the Gaussian distribution and a slightly different distribution (cosine distribution) which allows the exact determination of the Nishimori line where magnetic and overlap correlation functions are equal. We perform Monte Carlo simulations for several values of the temperature and of the variance of the disorder distribution, in the paramagnetic phase close to the magnetic and glassy transition lines. We find that, along the transition line separating the paramagnetic and the quasi-long-range order phases, magnetic correlation functions show a universal Kosterlitz-Thouless behavior as in the pure XY model, while overlap correlations show a disorder-dependent critical behavior. This behavior is observed up to a multicritical point which, in the cosine model, lies on the Nishimori line. Finally, for large values of the disorder variance, we observe a universal zero-temperature glassy critical transition, which is in the same universality class as that occurring in the gauge-glass model.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2009

Entanglement entropy of excited states

We study the entanglement entropy of a block of contiguous spins in excited states of spin chains. We consider the XY model in a transverse field and the XXZ Heisenberg spin-chain. For the latter, we developed a numerical application of algebraic Bethe Ansatz. We find two main classes of states with logarithmic and extensive behavior in the dimension of the block, characterized by the properties of excitations of the state. This behavior can be related to the locality properties of the Hamiltonian having a given state as ground state. We also provide several details of the finite size scaling.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2009

Quasi-long-range order in the 2D XY model with random phase shifts

We study the square-lattice XY model in the presence of random phase shifts. We consider two different disorder distributions with zero average shift and investigate the low-temperature quasi-long-range order phase which occurs for sufficiently low disorder. By means of Monte Carlo simulations we determine several universal quantities which are then compared with the analytic predictions of the random spin-wave theory. We observe a very good agreement which indicates that the universal long-distance behavior in the whole low-disorder low-temperature phase is fully described by the random spin-wave theory.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2007

The uniformly frustrated two-dimensional XY model in the limit of weak frustration

We consider the two-dimensional uniformly frustrated XY model in the limit of small frustration, which is equivalent to an XY system, for instance a Josephson junction array, in a weak uniform magnetic field applied along a direction orthogonal to the lattice. We show that the uniform frustration (equivalently, the magnetic field) destabilizes the line of fixed points which characterize the critical behaviour of the XY model for T <= T_{KT}, where T_{KT} is the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition temperature: the system is paramagnetic at any temperature for sufficiently small frustration. We predict the critical behaviour of the correlation length and of gauge-invariant magnetic susceptibilities as the frustration goes to zero. These predictions are fully confirmed by the numerical simulations.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗