Perturbation expansions for quantum many-body systems

A systematic method for developing high-order, zero-temperature perturbation expansions for quantum many-body systems is presented. The models discussed explicitly are spin models with a variety of interactions, in one and two dimensions. The wide applicability of the method is illustrated by expansions around Hamiltonians with ordered and disordered ground states, namely Ising and dimerized models. Computer implementation of this method is discussed in great detail. Some previously unpublished series are tabulated.     

Thermodynamics of quantum dissipative many-body systems

We consider quantum nonlinear many-body systems with dissipation described within the Caldeira-Leggett model, i.e., by a nonlocal action in the path integral for the density matrix. Approximate classical-like formulas for thermodynamic quantities are derived for the case of many degrees of freedom, with general kinetic and dissipative quadratic forms. The underlying scheme is the pure-quantum self-consistent harmonic approximation (PQSCHA), equivalent to the variational approach by the Feynman-Jensen inequality with a suitable quadratic nonlocal trial action. A low-coupling approximation permits us to get manageable PQSCHA expressions for quantum thermal averages with a classical Boltzmann factor involving an effective potential and an inner Gaussian average that describes the fluctuations originating from the interplay of quanticity and dissipation. The application of the PQSCHA to a quantum phi(4) chain with Drude-like dissipation shows nontrivial effects of dissipation, depending upon its strength and bandwidth.     

Real-time path integral approach to nonequilibrium many-body quantum systems

A real-time path-integral Monte Carlo approach is developed to study the dynamics in a many-body quantum system coupled to a phonon background until reaching a nonequilibrium stationary state. The approach is based on augmenting an exact reduced equation for the evolution of the system in the interaction picture which is amenable to an efficient path integral (worldline) Monte Carlo approach. Results obtained for a model of inelastic tunneling spectroscopy reveal the applicability of the approach to a wide range of physically important regimes, including high (classical) and low (quantum) temperatures, and weak (perturbative) and strong electron-phonon couplings.     

Biorthogonal quantum criticality in non-Hermitian many-body systems

We develop the perturbation theory of the fidelity susceptibility in biorthogonal bases for arbitrary interacting non-Hermitian many-body systems with real eigenvalues. The quantum criticality in the non-Hermitian transverse field Ising chain is investigated by the second derivative of the ground-state energy and the ground-state fidelity susceptibility. We show that the system undergoes a second-order phase transition with the Ising universal class by numerically computing the critical points and the critical exponents from the finite-size scaling theory. Interestingly, our results indicate that the biorthogonal quantum phase transitions are described by the biorthogonal fidelity susceptibility instead of the conventional fidelity susceptibility.     

Efficient simulation of one-dimensional quantum many-body systems

We present a numerical method to simulate the time evolution, according to a generic Hamiltonian made of local interactions, of quantum spin chains and systems alike. The efficiency of the scheme depends on the amount of entanglement involved in the simulated evolution. Numerical analysis indicates that this method can be used, for instance, to efficiently compute time-dependent properties of low-energy dynamics in sufficiently regular but otherwise arbitrary one-dimensional quantum many-body systems. As by-products, we describe two alternatives to the density matrix renormalization group method.     

Nonlinear quantum dynamical semigroups for many-body open systems

The notion of a nonlinear quantum dynamical semigroup is introduced, and the existence and uniqueness of solutions of the corresponding nonlinear evolution equations are studied in a more abstract framework. The construction of nonlinear quantum dynamical semigroups is carried out for two different mean-field models. First a mean-field coupling between a system of noninteracting subsystems and the bath is investigated. As examples, a nonlinear frictional Schrödinger equation and a model for a quantum Boltzmann equation are discussed. Second, a many-body system with mean-field interaction coupled to a bath is considered. Here, again, the form of the generator is derived; however, it cannot be obtained rigorously, except for some particular examples. Finally, the quantum Ising-Weiss model is briefly studied.     

Adiabatic dynamics in open quantum critical many-body systems

The purpose of this work is to understand the effect of an external environment on the adiabatic dynamics of a quantum critical system. By means of scaling arguments we derive a general expression for the density of excitations produced in the quench as a function of its velocity and of the temperature of the bath. We corroborate the scaling analysis by explicitly solving the case of a one-dimensional quantum Ising model coupled to an Ohmic bath.     

Periodically driven ergodic and many-body localized quantum systems

We study dynamics of isolated quantum many-body systems whose Hamiltonian is switched between two different operators periodically in time. The eigenvalue problem of the associated Floquet operator maps onto an effective hopping problem. Using the effective model, we establish conditions on the spectral properties of the two Hamiltonians for the system to localize in energy space. We find that ergodic systems always delocalize in energy space and heat up to infinite temperature, for both local and global driving. In contrast, many-body localized systems with quenched disorder remain localized at finite energy. We support our conclusions by numerical simulations of disordered spin chains. We argue that our results hold for general driving protocols, and discuss their experimental implications.     

有限温度量子多体系统与热态张量网络

量子多体系统热力学性质的精确模拟在理论和实验方面都具有重要的价值。局域相互作用量子多体系统的热态满足互信息(mutual information)面积律,对于这样的系统,热态张量网络可以提供满足面积律的精确“波函数”拟设,提供了模拟有限温度系统的有力手段。文章介绍了关联格点模型在有限温度下的热态张量网络刻画及相关模拟方法。作者按照世界线热态张量网络和级数展开热态张量网络来分别介绍,并讨论了自由能极小变分原理与重正化群剪裁的优化原则。世界线框架内,人们发展了转移矩阵重正化群,基于纯化策略的有限温度密度矩阵重正化群,以及张量网络的线性重正化群等方法。在此基础上,介绍作者新近提出的级数展开热态张量网络方法,该方法受随机级数展开量子蒙特卡罗方法的启发,突破了世界线方法的局限,提高了有限温度计算重正化群模拟的精度标准,并且在计算阻挫量子自旋链模型时不会有负符号问题。此外,文章讨论了在两维格点系统上推广有限温度张量网络计算的进展和未来展望。     

Excited state quantum phase transitions in many-body systems

Phenomena analogous to ground state quantum phase transitions have recently been noted to occur among states throughout the excitation spectra of certain many-body models. These excited state phase transitions are manifested as simultaneous singularities in the eigenvalue spectrum (including the gap or level density), order parameters, and wave function properties. In this article, the characteristics of excited state quantum phase transitions are investigated. The finite-size scaling behavior is determined at the mean-field level. It is found that excited state quantum phase transitions are universal to two-level bosonic and fermionic models with pairing interactions.     

Experimental quantum simulation of entanglement in many-body systems

We employ a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum information processor to simulate the ground state of an XXZ spin chain and measure its NMR analog of entanglement, or pseudoentanglement. The observed pseudoentanglement for a small-size system already displays a singularity, a signature which is qualitatively similar to that in the thermodynamical limit across quantum phase transitions, including an infinite-order critical point. The experimental results illustrate a successful approach to investigate quantum correlations in many-body systems using quantum simulators.     

Characterizing and quantifying frustration in quantum many-body systems

We present a general scheme for the study of frustration in quantum systems. We introduce a universal measure of frustration for arbitrary quantum systems and we relate it to a class of entanglement monotones via an exact inequality. If all the (pure) ground states of a given Hamiltonian saturate the inequality, then the system is said to be inequality saturating. We introduce sufficient conditions for a quantum spin system to be inequality saturating and confirm them with extensive numerical tests. These conditions provide a generalization to the quantum domain of the Toulouse criteria for classical frustration-free systems. The models satisfying these conditions can be reasonably identified as geometrically unfrustrated and subject to frustration of purely quantum origin. Our results therefore establish a unified framework for studying the intertwining of geometric and quantum contributions to frustration.     

Schrieffer–Wolff transformation for quantum many-body systems

The Schrieffer–Wolff (SW) method is a version of degenerate perturbation theory in which the low-energy effective Hamiltonian is obtained from the exact Hamiltonian by a unitary transformation decoupling the low-energy and high-energy subspaces. We give a self-contained summary of the SW method with a focus on rigorous results. We begin with an exact definition of the SW transformation in terms of the so-called direct rotation between linear subspaces. From this we obtain elementary proofs of several important properties of such as the linked cluster theorem. We then study the perturbative version of the SW transformation obtained from a Taylor series representation of the direct rotation. Our perturbative approach provides a systematic diagram technique for computing high-order corrections to . We then specialize the SW method to quantum spin lattices with short-range interactions. We establish unitary equivalence between effective low-energy Hamiltonians obtained using two different versions of the SW method studied in the literature. Finally, we derive an upper bound on the precision up to which the ground state energy of the nth-order effective Hamiltonian approximates the exact ground state energy.     

Unifying variational methods for simulating quantum many-body systems

We introduce a unified formulation of variational methods for simulating ground state properties of quantum many-body systems. The key feature is a novel variational method over quantum circuits via infinitesimal unitary transformations, inspired by flow equation methods. Variational classes are represented as efficiently contractible unitary networks, including the matrix-product states of density matrix renormalization, multiscale entanglement renormalization (MERA) states, weighted graph states, and quantum cellular automata. In particular, this provides a tool for varying over classes of states, such as MERA, for which so far no efficient way of variation has been known. The scheme is flexible when it comes to hybridizing methods or formulating new ones. We demonstrate the functioning by numerical implementations of MERA, matrix-product states, and a new variational set on benchmarks.     

Signal propagation in lattice models of quantum many-body systems

Upper and lower bounds are proven for the speed of propagation of general classes of physical signals in particle lattice models.     

Nonlocality in many-body quantum systems detected with two-body correlators

Contemporary understanding of correlations in quantum many-body systems and in quantum phase transitions is based to a large extent on the recent intensive studies of entanglement in many-body systems. In contrast, much less is known about the role of quantum nonlocality in these systems, mostly because the available multipartite Bell inequalities involve high-order correlations among many particles, which are hard to access theoretically, and even harder experimentally. Standard, “theorist- and experimentalist-friendly” many-body observables involve correlations among only few (one, two, rarely three...) particles. Typically, there is no multipartite Bell inequality for this scenario based on such low-order correlations. Recently, however, we have succeeded in constructing multipartite Bell inequalities that involve two- and one-body correlations only, and showed how they revealed the nonlocality in many-body systems relevant for nuclear and atomic physics [Tura et al., Science 344 (2014) 1256]. With the present contribution we continue our work on this problem. On the one hand, we present a detailed derivation of the above Bell inequalities, pertaining to permutation symmetry among the involved parties. On the other hand, we present a couple of new results concerning such Bell inequalities. First, we characterize their tightness. We then discuss maximal quantum violations of these inequalities in the general case, and their scaling with the number of parties. Moreover, we provide new classes of two-body Bell inequalities which reveal nonlocality of the Dicke states—ground states of physically relevant and experimentally realizable Hamiltonians. Finally, we shortly discuss various scenarios for nonlocality detection in mesoscopic systems of trapped ions or atoms, and by atoms trapped in the vicinity of designed nanostructures.