Publications

We study the quench dynamics of the one-dimensional Hubbard model through the quench action formalism. We introduce a class of integrable initial states—expressed as product states over two sites—for which we can provide an exact characterisation of the late-time regime. This is achieved by finding a closed-form expression for the overlaps between our states and the Bethe ansatz eigenstates, which we check explicitly in the limits of low densities and infinite repulsion. Our solution gives access to the stationary values attained by local observables (we show the explicit example of the density of doubly occupied sites) and the asymptotic entanglement dynamics directly in the thermodynamic limit. Interestingly, we find that for intermediate interaction strength Rényi entropies display a double-slope structure.

Machine-learned regression models represent a promising tool to implement accurate and computationally affordable energy-density functionals to solve quantum many-body problems via density functional theory. However, while they can easily be trained to accurately map ground-state density profiles to the corresponding energies, their functional derivatives often turn out to be too noisy, leading to instabilities in self-consistent iterations and in gradient-based searches of the ground-state density profile. We investigate how these instabilities occur when standard deep neural networks are adopted as regression models, and we show how to avoid them by using an ad hoc convolutional architecture featuring an interchannel averaging layer. The main testbed we consider is a realistic model for noninteracting atoms in optical speckle disorder. With the interchannel average, accurate and systematically improvable ground-state energies and density profiles are obtained via gradient-descent optimization, without instabilities nor violations of the variational principle.

We study nonhomogeneous quantum quenches in a one-dimensional gas of repulsive spin-1/2 fermions, as described by the integrable Yang-Gaudin model. By means of generalized hydrodynamics (GHD), we analyze in detail the real-time evolution following a sudden change of the confining potential. We consider in particular release protocols and trap quenches, including a version of the quantum Newton's cradle. At zero temperature, we employ a simplified phase-space hydrodynamic picture to characterize the dynamics of the particle- and spin-density profiles. Away from zero temperatures, we perform a thorough numerical study of the GHD equations, and provide quantitative predictions for different values of the temperature, external magnetic field, and chemical potential. We highlight the qualitative features arising due to the multicomponent nature of the elementary excitations, discussing in particular effects of spin-charge separation and dynamical polarization.

We study the dynamics of the quantum Dyson hierarchical model in its paramagnetic phase. An initial state made by a local excitation of the paramagnetic ground state is considered. We provide analytical predictions for its time evolution, solving the single-particle dynamics on a hierarchical network. A localization mechanism is found, and the excitation remains close to its initial position at arbitrary times. Furthermore, a universal scaling among space and time is found that is related to the algebraic decay of the interactions as r-1-σ. We compare our predictions to numerics, employing tensor network techniques, for large magnetic fields, discussing the robustness of the mechanism in the full many-body dynamics.

We study the statistics of the first-passage time of a single run-and-tumble particle (RTP) in one spatial dimension, with or without resetting, to a fixed target located at L>0. First, we compute the first-passage time distribution of a free RTP, without resetting or in a confining potential, but averaged over the initial position drawn from an arbitrary distribution p(x). Recent experiments used a noninstantaneous resetting protocol that motivated us to study in particular the case where p(x) corresponds to the stationary non-Boltzmann distribution of an RTP in the presence of a harmonic trap. This distribution p(x) is characterized by a parameter ν>0, which depends on the microscopic parameters of the RTP dynamics. We show that the first-passage time distribution of the free RTP, drawn from this initial distribution, develops interesting singular behaviors, depending on the value of ν. We then switch on resetting, mimicked by relaxation of the RTP in the presence of a harmonic trap. Resetting leads to a finite mean first-passage time and we study this as a function of the resetting rate for different values of the parameters ν and b=L/c, where c is the position of the right edge of the initial distribution p(x). In the diffusive limit of the RTP dynamics, we find a rich phase diagram in the (b,ν) plane, with an interesting reentrance phase transition. Away from the diffusive limit, qualitatively similar rich behaviors emerge for the full RTP dynamics.

We present a one-dimensional multicomponent model, known to be partially integrable when restricted to the subspaces made of only two components. By constructing fully antisymmetrized bases, we find integrable excited eigenstates corresponding to the totally antisymmetric irreducible representation of the permutation operator in the otherwise nonintegrable subspaces. We establish rigorously the breakdown of integrability in those subspaces by showing explicitly the violation of the Yang-Baxter equation. We further solve the constraints from the Yang-Baxter equation to find exceptional momenta that allows Bethe ansatz solutions of solitonic bound states. These integrable eigenstates have distinct dynamical consequence from the embedded integrable subspaces previously known, as they do not span their separate Krylov subspaces, and a generic initial state can partly overlap with them and therefore have slow thermalization. However, this novel form of weak ergodicity breaking contrasts with that of quantum many-body scars in that the integrable eigenstates involved do not have necessarily low entanglement. Our approach provides a complementary route to arrive at exact excited states in nonintegrable models: instead of solving towers of single-mode excited states based on a solvable ground state in a nonintegrable model, we identify the integrable eigenstates that survive in a deformation of the Hamiltonian away from its integrable point.

The effective dynamics of a colloidal particle immersed in a complex medium is often described in terms of an overdamped linear Langevin equation for its velocity with a memory kernel which determines the effective (time-dependent) friction and the correlations of fluctuations. Recently, it has been shown in experiments and numerical simulations that this memory may depend on the possible optical confinement the particle is subject to, suggesting that this description does not capture faithfully the actual dynamics of the colloid, even at equilibrium. Here, we propose a different approach in which we model the medium as a Gaussian field linearly coupled to the colloid. The resulting effective evolution equation of the colloidal particle features a non-linear memory term which extends previous models and which explains qualitatively the experimental and numerical evidence in the presence of confinement. This non-linear term is related to the correlations of the effective noise via a novel fluctuation-dissipation relation which we derive.

We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of two particles confined in two spatially separated harmonic potentials and linearly coupled to the same thermally fluctuating scalar field, a cartoon for optically trapped colloids in contact with a medium close to a continuous phase transition. When an external periodic driving is applied to one of these particles, a nonequilibrium periodic state is eventually reached in which their motion synchronizes thanks to the field-mediated effective interaction, a phenomenon already observed in experiments. We fully characterize the nonlinear response of the second particle as a function of the driving frequency, in particular far from the adiabatic regime in which the field can be assumed to relax instantaneously. We compare the perturbative, analytic solution to its adiabatic approximation, thus determining the limits of validity of the latter, and we qualitatively test our predictions against numerical simulations.

We consider the two-dimensional quantum Ising model, in absence of disorder, subject to periodic imperfect global spin flips. We show by a combination of exact diagonalization and tensor-network methods that the system can sustain a spontaneously broken discrete time-translation symmetry. Employing careful scaling analysis, we show the feasibility of a two-dimensional discrete time-crystal (DTC) prethermal phase. Despite an unbounded energy pumped into the system, in the high-frequency limit, a well-defined effective Hamiltonian controls a finite-temperature intermediate regime, wherein local time averages are described by thermal averages. As a consequence, the long-lived stability of the DTC relies on the existence of a long-range ordered phase at finite temperature. Interestingly, even for large deviations from the perfect spin flip, we observe a nonperturbative change in the decay rate of the order parameter, which is related to the long-lived stability of the magnetic domains in 2D.

A large repulsion between particles in a quantum system can lead to their localization, an effect responsible for the Mott insulator phases in strongly correlated materials. In a system with multiple orbitals, an orbital-selective Mott insulator can form, where electrons in some orbitals are predicted to localize while others remain itinerant. Here we demonstrate a more general version of this phenomenon by observing flavour-selective localization in an atom-based quantum simulator. Our experiment realizes Fermi–Hubbard models with an SU(3) symmetry that can be broken using a tunable coupling between flavours. We observe an enhancement of the localization associated with a selective Mott transition and the emergence of flavour-dependent correlations. Our realization of flavour-selective Mott physics demonstrates the potential of cold atoms to simulate interacting multicomponent materials such as superconductors and topological insulators.

We study the nonequilibrium evolution of coexisting ferromagnetic domains in the two-dimensional quantum Ising model - a setup relevant in several contexts, from quantum nucleation dynamics and false-vacuum decay scenarios to recent experiments with Rydberg-atom arrays. We demonstrate that the quantum-fluctuating interface delimiting a large bubble can be studied as an effective one-dimensional system through a "holographic"mapping. For the considered model, the emergent interface excitations map to an integrable chain of fermionic particles. We discuss how this integrability is broken by geometric features of the bubbles and by corrections in inverse powers of the ferromagnetic coupling, and provide a lower bound to the timescale after which the bubble is ultimately expected to melt. Remarkably, we demonstrate that a symmetry-breaking longitudinal field gives rise to a robust ergodicity breaking in two dimensions, a phenomenon underpinned by Stark many-body localization of the emergent fermionic excitations of the interface.

The growth of Renyi entropies after the injection of energy into a correlated system provides a window upon the dynamics of its entanglement properties. We develop here a simulation scheme by which this growth can be determined in Luttinger liquids systems with arbitrary interactions, even those introducing gaps into the liquid. We apply this scheme to an experimentally relevant quench in the sine-Gordon field theory. While for short times we provide analytic expressions for the growth of the second and third Renyi entropy, to access longer times, we combine our scheme with truncated spectrum methods.

We study the entanglement entropies of an interval adjacent to the boundary of the half line for the free fermionic spinless Schrödinger field theory at finite density and zero temperature, with either Neumann or Dirichlet boundary conditions. They are finite functions of the dimensionless parameter given by the product of the Fermi momentum and the length of the interval. The entanglement entropy displays an oscillatory behaviour, differently from the case of the interval on the whole line. This behaviour is related to the Friedel oscillations of the mean particle density on the half line at the entangling point. We find analytic expressions for the expansions of the entanglement entropies in the regimes of small and large values of the dimensionless parameter. They display a remarkable agreement with the curves obtained numerically. The analysis is extended to a family of free fermionic Lifshitz models labelled by their integer Lifshitz exponent, whose parity determines the properties of the entanglement entropies. The cumulants of the local charge operator and the Schatten norms of the underlying kernels are also explored.

We study the multi-charged moments for two disjoint intervals in the ground state of two 1 + 1 dimensional CFTs with central charge c = 1 and global U(1) symmetry: the massless Dirac field theory and the compact boson (Luttinger liquid). For this purpose, we compute the partition function on the higher genus Riemann surface arising from the replica method in the presence of background magnetic fluxes between the sheets of the surface. We consider the general situation in which the fluxes generate different twisted boundary conditions at each branch point. The obtained multi-charged moments allow us to derive the symmetry resolution of the Rényi entanglement entropies and the mutual information for non complementary bipartitions. We check our findings against exact numerical results for the tight-binding model, which is a lattice realisation of the massless Dirac theory.

Given a statistical ensemble of quantum states, the corresponding Page curve quantifies the average entanglement entropy associated with each possible spatial bipartition of the system. In this work, we study a natural extension in the presence of a conservation law and introduce the symmetry-resolved Page curves, characterizing average bipartite symmetry-resolved entanglement entropies. We derive explicit analytic formulas for two important statistical ensembles with a U(1)-symmetry: Haar-random pure states and random fermionic Gaussian states. In the former case, the symmetry-resolved Page curves can be obtained in an elementary way from the knowledge of the standard one. This is not true for random fermionic Gaussian states. In this case, we derive an analytic result in the thermodynamic limit based on a combination of techniques from random-matrix and large-deviation theories. We test our predictions against numerical calculations and discuss the subleading finite-size corrections.

By taking inspiration from the backflow transformation for correlated systems, we introduce a tensor network Ansatz which extends the well-established matrix product state representation of a quantum many-body wave function. This structure provides enough resources to ensure that states in dimensions larger than or equal to one obey an area law for entanglement. It can be efficiently manipulated to address the ground-state search problem by means of an optimization scheme which mixes tensor-network and variational Monte Carlo algorithms. We benchmark the Ansatz against spin models both in one and two dimensions, demonstrating high accuracy and precision. We finally employ our approach to study the challenging S=1/2 two-dimensional (2D) J1-J2 model, demonstrating that it is competitive with the state-of-the-art methods in 2D.

We study the semiclassical limit of the anisotropic two-photon Dicke model with a dissipative bosonic field and describe its rich nonlinear dynamics. Besides normal and 'superradiant'-like phases, the presence of localized fixed points reflects the spectral collapse of the closed-system Hamiltonian. Through Hopf bifurcations of superradiant and normal fixed points, limit cycles are formed in certain regions of parameters. We also identify a pole-flip transition induced by anisotropy and a region of chaotic dynamics, which appears from a cascade of period-doubling bifurcations. In the chaotic region, collision and fragmentation of symmetric attractors take place. Throughout the phase diagram we find several examples of phase coexistence, leading to the segmentation of phase space into distinct basins of attraction.

We investigate the ground state of a (1+1)-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) built with M species of massless free Dirac fermions coupled at one boundary point via a conformal junction/interface. Each CFT represents a wire of finite length L. We develop a systematic strategy to compute the Rényi entropies for a generic bipartition between the wires and the entanglement negativity between two non-complementary sets of wires. Both these entanglement measures turn out to grow logarithmically with L with an exactly calculated universal prefactor depending on the details of the junction and of the bipartition. These analytic predictions are tested numerically for junctions of free Fermi gases, finding perfect agreement.

We consider free-fermion chains in the ground state and the entanglement Hamiltonian for a subsystem consisting of two separated intervals. In this case, one has a peculiar long-range hopping between the intervals in addition to the well-known and dominant short-range hopping. We show how the continuum expressions can be recovered from the lattice results for general filling and arbitrary intervals. We also discuss the closely related case of a single interval located at a certain distance from the end of a semi-infinite chain and the continuum limit for this problem. Finally, we show that for the double interval in the continuum a commuting operator exists which can be used to find the eigenstates.

Phase transitions are key in determining and controlling the quantum properties of correlated materials. Here, by using the combination of material synthesis and photoelectron spectroscopy, we demonstrate a genuine Mott transition undressed of any symmetry breaking side effects in the thin films of V2O3. In particular and in contrast with the bulk V2O3, we unveil the purely electronic dynamics approaching the metal-insulator transition, disentangled from the structural transformation that is prevented by the residual substrate-induced strain. On approaching the transition, the spectral signal evolves slowly over a wide temperature range, the Fermi wave-vector does not change, and the critical temperature is lower than the one reported for the bulk. Our findings are fundamental in demonstrating the universal benchmarks of a genuine nonsymmetry breaking Mott transition, extendable to a large array of correlated quantum systems, and hold promise of exploiting the metal-insulator transition by implementing V2O3 thin films in devices.