Publications

We study how to achieve the ultimate power in the simplest, yet non-trivial, model of a thermal machine, namely a two-level quantum system coupled to two thermal baths. Without making any prior assumption on the protocol, via optimal control we show that, regardless of the microscopic details and of the operating mode of the thermal machine, the maximum power is universally achieved by a fast Otto-cycle like structure in which the controls are rapidly switched between two extremal values. A closed formula for the maximum power is derived, and finite-speed effects are discussed. We also analyze the associated efficiency at maximum power showing that, contrary to universal results derived in the slow-driving regime, it can approach Carnot's efficiency, no other universal bounds being allowed.

We consider the symmetry resolved Rényi entropies in the one dimensional tight binding model, equivalent to the spin-1/2 XX chain in a magnetic field. We exploit the generalised Fisher-Hartwig conjecture to obtain the asymptotic behaviour of the entanglement entropies with a flux charge insertion at leading and subleading orders. The o(1) contributions are found to exhibit a rich structure of oscillatory behaviour. We then use these results to extract the symmetry resolved entanglement, determining exactly all the non-universal constants and logarithmic corrections to the scaling that are not accessible to the field theory approach. We also discuss how our results are generalised to a one-dimensional free fermi gas.

We study the response of a quantum Ising chain to transverse field oscillations in the asymptotic state attained after a quantum quench. We show that for quenches across a quantum phase transition, the dissipative part of the response at low frequencies is negative, corresponding to energy emission up to a critical frequency ω∗. The latter is found to be connected to the time period t∗ of the singularities in the Loschmidt echo (t∗=2π/ω∗) signaling the presence of a dynamical quantum phase transition. This result suggests that a linear-response experiment can be used to detect this kind of phenomenon.

The surprising insulating and superconducting states of narrow-band graphene twisted bilayers have been mostly discussed so far in terms of strong electron correlation, with little or no attention to phonons and electron-phonon effects. We found that, among the 33 492 phonons of a fully relaxed θ=1.08° twisted bilayer, there are few special, hard, and nearly dispersionless modes that resemble global vibrations of the moiré supercell, as if it were a single, ultralarge molecule. One of them, doubly degenerate at Γ with symmetry A1+B1, couples very strongly with the valley degrees of freedom, also doubly degenerate, realizing a so-called EâŠ-e Jahn-Teller (JT) coupling. The JT coupling lifts very efficiently all degeneracies which arise from the valley symmetry, and may lead, for an average atomic displacement as small as 0.5 m Å, to an insulating state at charge neutrality. This insulator possesses a nontrivial topology testified by the odd winding of the Wilson loop. In addition, freezing the same phonon at a zone boundary point brings about insulating states at most integer occupancies of the four ultraflat electronic bands. Following that line, we further study the properties of the superconducting state that might be stabilized by these modes. Since the JT coupling modulates the hopping between AB and BA stacked regions, pairing occurs in the spin-singlet Cooper channel at the inter-(AB-BA) scale, which may condense a superconducting order parameter in the extended s-wave and/or d±id-wave symmetry.

We consider a lattice version of the Bisognano-Wichmann (BW) modular Hamiltonian as an ansatz for the bipartite entanglement Hamiltonian of the quantum critical chains. Using numerically unbiased methods, we check the accuracy of the BW ansatz by both comparing the BW Rényi entropy to the exact results and investigating the size scaling of the norm distance between the exact reduced density matrix and the BW one. Our study encompasses a variety of models, scanning different universality classes, including integrable models such as the transverse field Ising, three-state Potts and XXZ chains, and the nonintegrable bilinear-biquadratic model. We show that the Rényi entropies obtained via the BW ansatz properly describe the scaling properties predicted by conformal field theory. Remarkably, the BW Rényi entropies also faithfully capture the corrections to the conformal field theory scaling associated with the energy density operator. In addition, we show that the norm distance between the discretized BW density matrix and the exact one asymptotically goes to zero with the system size: this indicates that the BW ansatz also can be employed to predict properties of the eigenvectors of the reduced density matrices and is thus potentially applicable to other entanglement-related quantities such as negativity.

We study the fluctuations of the Gaussian model, with conservation of the order parameter, evolving in contact with a thermal bath quenched from an initial inverse temperatureto a final one. At every time there exists a critical value of the variance s of the order parameter per degree of freedom such that the fluctuations with are characterized by a macroscopic contribution of the zero wavevector mode, similarly to what occurs in an ordinary condensation transition. We show that the probability of fluctuations with>, for which condensation never occurs, rapidly converges towards a stationary behavior. By contrast, the process of populating the zero wavevector mode of the variance, which takes place for , induces a slow non-equilibrium dynamics resembling that of systems quenched across a phase transition.

Analogue gravity can be used to reproduce the phenomenology of quantum field theory in curved spacetime and in particular phenomena such as cosmological particle creation and Hawking radiation. In black hole physics, taking into account the backreaction of such effects on the metric requires an extension to semiclassical gravity and leads to an apparent inconsistency in the theory: the black hole evaporation induces a breakdown of the unitary quantum evolution leading to the so-called information loss problem. Here, we show that analogue gravity can provide an interesting perspective on the resolution of this problem, albeit the backreaction in analogue systems is not described by semiclassical Einstein equations. In particular, by looking at the simpler problem of cosmological particle creation, we show, in the context of Bose-Einstein condensates analogue gravity, that the emerging analogue geometry and quasi-particles have correlations due to the quantum nature of the atomic degrees of freedom underlying the emergent spacetime. The quantum evolution is, of course, always unitary, but on the whole Hilbert space, which cannot be exactly factorized a posteriori in geometry and quasi-particle components. In analogy, in a black hole evaporation one should expect a continuous process creating correlations between the Hawking quanta and the microscopic quantum degrees of freedom of spacetime, implying that only a full quantum gravity treatment would be able to resolve the information loss problem by proving the unitary evolution on the full Hilbert space.

We report on a systematic replica approach to calculate the subsystem trace distance for a quantum field theory. This method has been recently introduced in [J. Zhang, P. Ruggiero and P. Calabrese, Phys. Rev. Lett.122 (2019) 141602], of which this work is a completion. The trace distance between two reduced density matrices ρA and σA is obtained from the moments tr(ρA− σA)n and taking the limit n → 1 of the traces of the even powers. We focus here on the case of a subsystem consisting of a single interval of length ℓ embedded in the low lying eigenstates of a one-dimensional critical system of length L, a situation that can be studied exploiting the path integral form of the reduced density matrices of two-dimensional conformal field theories. The trace distance turns out to be a scale invariant universal function of ℓ/L. Here we complete our previous work by providing detailed derivations of all results and further new formulas for the distances between several low-lying states in two-dimensional free massless compact boson and fermion theories. Remarkably, for one special case in the bosonic theory and for another in the fermionic one, we obtain the exact trace distance, as well as the Schatten n-distance, for an interval of arbitrary length, while in generic case we have a general form for the first term in the expansion in powers of ℓ/L. The analytical predictions in conformal field theories are tested against exact numerical calculations in XX and Ising spin chains, finding perfect agreement. As a byproduct, new results in two-dimensional CFT are also obtained for other entanglement-related quantities, such as the relative entropy and the fidelity.

As realized by Kapitza long ago, a rigid pendulum can be stabilized upside down by periodically driving its suspension point with tuned amplitude and frequency. While this dynamical stabilization is feasible in a variety of systems with few degrees of freedom, it is natural to search for generalizations to multiparticle systems. In particular, a fundamental question is whether, by periodically driving a single parameter in a many-body system, one can stabilize an otherwise unstable phase of matter against all possible fluctuations of its microscopic degrees of freedom. In this paper, we show that such stabilization occurs in experimentally realizable quantum many-body systems: A periodic modulation of a transverse magnetic field can make ferromagnetic spin systems with long-range interactions stably trapped around unstable paramagnetic configurations as well as in other unconventional dynamical phases with no equilibrium counterparts. We demonstrate that these quantum Kapitza phases have a long lifetime and can be observed in current experiments with trapped ions.

The past few years have witnessed the development of a comprehensive theory to describe integrable systems out of equilibrium, in which the Bethe ansatz formalism has been tailored to address specific problems arising in this context. While most of the work initially focused on the study of prototypical models such as the well-known Heisenberg chain, many theoretical results have been recently extended to a class of more complicated nested integrable systems, displaying different species of quasiparticles. Still, in the simplest context of quantum quenches, the vast majority of theoretical predictions have been numerically verified only in systems with an elementary Bethe ansatz description. In this work, we fill this gap and present a direct numerical test of some results presented in the recent literature for nested systems, focusing in particular on the Lai–Sutherland model. Using time-dependent density matrix renormalization group and exact diagonalization methods, we compute the spreading of both correlation functions and entanglement entropy after a quench from a simple class of product initial states. This allows us to test the validity of the nested version of a conjectured formula, based on the quasiparticle picture, for the growth of the entanglement entropy, and the Bethe ansatz predictions for the ‘light-cone’ velocity of correlation functions.

An integrable model subjected to a periodic driving gives rise generally to a nonintegrable Floquet Hamiltonian. Here we show that the Floquet Hamiltonian of the integrable Lieb-Liniger model in the presence of a linear potential with a periodic time-dependent strength is instead integrable and its quasienergies can be determined using the Bethe ansatz approach. We discuss various aspects of the dynamics of the system at stroboscopic times and we also propose a possible experimental realization of the periodically driven tilting in terms of a shaken rotated ring potential.

Quantum many body systems with long range interactions are known to display many fascinating phenomena experimentally observable in trapped ions, Rydberg atoms and polar molecules. Among these are dynamical phase transitions which occur after an abrupt quench in spin chains with interactions decaying as r−α and whose critical dynamics depend crucially on the power α: for systems with α < 1 the transition is sharp while for α > 1 it fans out in a chaotic crossover region. In this paper we explore the fate of critical dynamics in Ising chains with long-range interactions when the transverse field is ramped up with a finite speed. While for abrupt quenches we observe a chaotic region that widens as α is increased, the width of the crossover region diminishes as the time of the ramp increases, suggesting that chaos will disappear altogether and be replaced by a sharp transition in the adiabatic limit.

How quantum information is scrambled in the global degrees of freedom of nonequilibrium many-body systems is a key question to understand local thermalization. A consequence of scrambling is that in the scaling limit the mutual information between two intervals vanishes at all times, i.e., it does not exhibit a peak at intermediate times. Here we investigate the mutual information scrambling after a quantum quench in both integrable and nonintegrable one-dimensional systems. We study the mutual information between two intervals of finite length as a function of their distance. In integrable systems, the mutual information exhibits an algebraic decay with the distance between the intervals, signaling weak scrambling. This behavior may be qualitatively understood within the quasiparticle picture for the entanglement spreading. In the scaling limit of large intervals, times, and distances between the intervals, with their ratios fixed, this predicts a decay exponent equal to 1/2. Away from the scaling limit, the power-law behavior persists, but with a larger (and model-dependent) exponent. For nonintegrable models, a much faster decay is observed, which can be attributed to the finite lifetime of the quasiparticles: unsurprisingly, nonintegrable models are better scramblers.

What gravitational field is generated by a massive quantum system in a spatial superposition? Despite decades of intensive theoretical and experimental research, we still do not know the answer. On the experimental side, the difficulty lies in the fact that gravity is weak and requires large masses to be detectable. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to generate spatial quantum superpositions for increasingly large masses, in light of the stronger environmental effects on such systems. Clearly, a delicate balance between the need for strong gravitational effects and weak decoherence should be found. We show that such a trade off could be achieved in an optomechanics scenario that allows to witness whether the gravitational field generated by a quantum system in a spatial superposition is in a coherent superposition or not. We estimate the magnitude of the effect and show that it offers perspectives for observability.

We investigate the features of the entanglement spectrum (distribution of the eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix) of a large quantum system in a pure state. We consider all Rényi entropies and recover purity and von Neumann entropy as particular cases. We construct the phase diagram of the theory and unveil the presence of two critical lines.

We develop a theoretical framework to study the influence of coupling asymmetry on the thermoelectrics of a strongly coupled SU(N) Kondo impurity based on a local Fermi liquid theory. Applying a nonequilibrium Keldysh formalism, we investigate a charge current driven by the voltage bias and temperature gradient in the strong coupling regime of an asymmetrically coupled SU(N) quantum impurity. The thermoelectric characterizations are made via nonlinear Seebeck effects. We demonstrate that the beyond particle-hole (PH) symmetric SU(N) Kondo variants are highly desirable with respect to the corresponding PH-symmetric setups in order to have significantly improved thermoelectric performance. The greatly enhanced Seebeck coefficients by tailoring the coupling asymmetry of beyond PH-symmetric SU(N) Kondo effects are explored. Apart from presenting the analytical expressions of asymmetry-dependent transport coefficients for general SU(N) Kondo effects, we make a close connection of our findings with the experimentally studied SU(2) and SU(4) Kondo effects in quantum dot nanostructures. Seebeck effects associated with the theoretically proposed SU(3) Kondo effects are discussed in detail.

We study the statistics of large deviations of the intensive work done in an interaction quench of a one-dimensional Bose gas with a large number N of particles, system size L, and fixed density. We consider the case in which the system is initially prepared in the noninteracting ground state and a repulsive interaction is suddenly turned on. For large deviations of the work below its mean value, we show that the large-deviation principle holds by means of the quench action approach. Using the latter, we compute exactly the so-called rate function and study its properties analytically. In particular, we find that fluctuations close to the mean value of the work exhibit a marked non-Gaussian behavior, even though their probability is always exponentially suppressed below it as L increases. Deviations larger than the mean value exhibit an algebraic decay whose exponent cannot be determined directly by large-deviation theory. Exploiting the exact Bethe ansatz representation of the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian, we calculate this exponent for vanishing particle density. Our approach can be straightforwardly generalized to quantum quenches in other interacting integrable systems.

We study the effect of a linear tunneling coupling between two-dimensional systems, each separately exhibiting the topological Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition. In the uncoupled limit, there are two phases: one where the one-body correlation functions are algebraically decaying and the other with exponential decay. When the linear coupling is turned on, a third BKT-paired phase emerges, in which one-body correlations are exponentially decaying, while two-body correlation functions exhibit power-law decay. We perform numerical simulations in the paradigmatic case of two coupled XY models at finite temperature, finding evidences that for any finite value of the interlayer coupling, the BKT-paired phase is present. We provide a picture of the phase diagram using a renormalization group approach.

We investigate the dissipative dynamics yielded by the Lindblad equation within the coexistence region around a first-order phase transition. In particular, we consider an exactly solvable, fully connected quantum Ising model with n-spin exchange (n>2) - the prototype of quantum first-order phase transitions - and several variants of the Lindblad equations. We show that physically sound results, including exotic nonequilibrium phenomena such as the Mpemba effect, can be obtained only when the Lindblad equation involves jump operators defined for each of the coexisting phases, whether stable or metastable.

A basic diagnostic of entanglement in mixed quantum states is known as the positive partial transpose (PT) criterion. Such criterion is based on the observation that the spectrum of the partially transposed density matrix of an entangled state contains negative eigenvalues, in turn, used to define an entanglement measure called the logarithmic negativity. Despite the great success of logarithmic negativity in characterizing bosonic many-body systems, generalizing the operation of PT to fermionic systems remained a technical challenge until recently when a more natural definition of PT for fermions that accounts for the Fermi statistics has been put forward. In this paper, we study the many-body spectrum of the reduced density matrix of two adjacent intervals for one-dimensional free fermions after applying the fermionic PT. We show that in general there is a freedom in the definition of such operation which leads to two different definitions of PT: the resulting density matrix is Hermitian in one case, while it becomes pseudo-Hermitian in the other case. Using the path-integral formalism, we analytically compute the leading order term of the moments in both cases and derive the distribution of the corresponding eigenvalues over the complex plane. We further verify our analytical findings by checking them against numerical lattice calculations.