56 research outputs found
Adiabatic dynamics in a spin-1 chain with uniaxial single-spin anisotropy
We study the adiabatic quantum dynamics of an anisotropic spin-1 XY chain
across a second order quantum phase transition. The system is driven out of
equilibrium by performing a quench on the uniaxial single-spin anisotropy, that
is supposed to vary linearly in time. We show that, for sufficiently large
system sizes, the excess energy after the quench admits a non trivial scaling
behavior that is not predictable by standard Kibble-Zurek arguments for
isolated critical points or extended critical regions. This emerges from a
competing effect of many accessible low-lying excited states, inside the whole
continuous line of critical points.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, published versio
Dynamics of an inhomogeneous quantum phase transition
We argue that in a second order quantum phase transition driven by an
inhomogeneous quench density of quasiparticle excitations is suppressed when
velocity at which a critical point propagates across a system falls below a
threshold velocity equal to the Kibble-Zurek correlation length times the
energy gap at freeze-out divided by . This general prediction is
supported by an analytic solution in the quantum Ising chain. Our results
suggest, in particular, that adiabatic quantum computers can be made more
adiabatic when operated in an "inhomogeneous" way.Comment: 7 pages; version to appear in a special issue of New J. Phy
Adiabatic dynamics of an inhomogeneous quantum phase transition: the case of z > 1 dynamical exponent
We consider an inhomogeneous quantum phase transition across a multicritical
point of the XY quantum spin chain. This is an example of a Lifshitz transition
with a dynamical exponent z = 2. Just like in the case z = 1 considered in New
J. Phys. 12, 055007 (2010) when a critical front propagates much faster than
the maximal group velocity of quasiparticles vq, then the transition is
effectively homogeneous: density of excitations obeys a generalized
Kibble-Zurek mechanism and scales with the sixth root of the transition rate.
However, unlike for z = 1, the inhomogeneous transition becomes adiabatic not
below vq but a lower threshold velocity v', proportional to inhomogeneity of
the transition, where the excitations are suppressed exponentially.
Interestingly, the adiabatic threshold v' is nonzero despite vanishing minimal
group velocity of low energy quasiparticles. In the adiabatic regime below v'
the inhomogeneous transition can be used for efficient adiabatic quantum state
preparation in a quantum simulator: the time required for the critical front to
sweep across a chain of N spins adiabatically is merely linear in N, while the
corresponding time for a homogeneous transition across the multicritical point
scales with the sixth power of N. What is more, excitations after the adiabatic
inhomogeneous transition, if any, are brushed away by the critical front to the
end of the spin chain.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, improved version accepted in NJ
Many-body localization and thermalization in the full probability distribution function of observables
We investigate the relation between thermalization following a quantum quench
and many-body localization in quasiparticle space in terms of the long-time
full distribution function of physical observables. In particular, expanding on
our recent work [E. Canovi {\em et al.}, Phys. Rev. B {\bf 83}, 094431 (2011)],
we focus on the long-time behavior of an integrable XXZ chain subject to an
integrability-breaking perturbation. After a characterization of the breaking
of integrability and the associated localization/delocalization transition
using the level spacing statistics and the properties of the eigenstates, we
study the effect of integrability-breaking on the asymptotic state after a
quantum quench of the anisotropy parameter, looking at the behavior of the full
probability distribution of the transverse and longitudinal magnetization of a
subsystem. We compare the resulting distributions with those obtained in
equilibrium at an effective temperature set by the initial energy. We find
that, while the long time distribution functions appear to always agree {\it
qualitatively} with the equilibrium ones, {\it quantitative} agreement is
obtained only when integrability is fully broken and the relevant eigenstates
are diffusive in quasi-particle space.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figure
Sea buckthorn bud extract displays activity against cell-cultured Influenza virus
Introduction: Vaccines and antiviral drugs are the most widely used methods of preventing or treating Influenza virus infection. The role of sea buckthorn (SBT) bud dry extract as a natural antiviral drug against Influenza was investigated. Methods: Influenza virus was cultured in the MDCK cell line, with or without SBT bud extract, and virus growth was assessed by HA and TCID50 virus titration in terms of cytopathic effect on cells. Several concentrations of extract were tested, the virus titer being measured on day 4 after infection. Results: After infection, the virus titer in the control sample was calculated to be 2.5 TCID50/ml; treatment with SBT bud extract reduced the virus titer to 2.0 TCID50/ml at 50 ÎĽg/ml, while the HA titer was reduced from 1431 (control) to 178. Concentrations lower than 50ÎĽg/ml displayed an inhibitory effect in the HA assay, but not in the TCID50 virus titration; however, observation of the viral cultures confirmed a slowdown of viral growth at all concentrations. Discussion: Natural dietary supplements and phytotherapy are a growing market and offer new opportunities for the treatment of several diseases and disorders. These preliminary experiments are the first to show that SBT bud extract is able to reduce the growth of the Influenza A H1N1 virus in vitro at a concentration of 50 ÎĽg/ml. This discovery opens up the possibility of using SBT bud extract as a valid weapon against Influenza and, in addition, as the starting-point for the discovery of new drugs
Localization and Glassy Dynamics Of Many-Body Quantum Systems
When classical systems fail to explore their entire configurational space, intriguing macroscopic phenomena like aging and glass formation may emerge. Also closed quanto-mechanical systems may stop wandering freely around the whole Hilbert space, even if they are initially prepared into a macroscopically large combination of eigenstates. Here, we report numerical evidences that the dynamics of strongly interacting lattice bosons driven sufficiently far from equilibrium can be trapped into extremely long-lived inhomogeneous metastable states. The slowing down of incoherent density excitations above a threshold energy, much reminiscent of a dynamical arrest on the verge of a glass transition, is identified as the key feature of this phenomenon. We argue that the resulting long-lived inhomogeneities are responsible for the lack of thermalization observed in large systems. Such a rich phenomenology could be experimentally uncovered upon probing the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of conveniently prepared quantum states of trapped cold atoms which we hereby suggest
Hydrodynamics of local excitations after an interaction quench in 1D cold atomic gases
We discuss the hydrodynamic approach to the study of the time evolution -induced by a quench- of local excitations in one dimension. We focus on interaction quenches: the considered protocol consists in creating a stable localized excitation propagating through the system, and then operating a sudden change of the interaction between the particles. To highlight the effect of the quench, we take the initial excitation to be a soliton. The quench splits the excitation into two packets moving in opposite directions, whose characteristics can be expressed in a universal way. Our treatment allows to describe the internal dynamics of these two packets in terms of the different velocities of their components. We confirm our analytical predictions through numerical simulations performed with the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and with the Calogero model (as an example of long range interactions and solvable with a parabolic confinement). Through the Calogero model we also discuss the effect of an external trapping on the protocol. The hydrodynamic approach shows that there is a difference between the bulk velocities of the propagating packets and the velocities of their peaks: it is possible to discriminate the two quantities, as we show through the comparison between numerical simulations and analytical estimates. In the realizations of the discussed quench protocol in a cold atom experiment, these different velocities are accessible through different measurement procedures. ArXI
Applicability of the generalized Gibbs ensemble after a quench in the quantum Ising chain
We investigate the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the one-dimensional quantum Ising model after a sudden quench in the transverse magnetic field. While for a translationally invariant system the statistical description of the asymptotic order parameter correlations after the quench can be performed in terms of the generalized Gibbs ensemble, we show that a breaking of translational invariance, e.g. by perturbing the boundary conditions, disrupts its validity. This effect, which of course vanishes in the thermodynamic limit, is shown to be very important in the presence of disorder
Quantum quenches, thermalization, and many-body localization
We conjecture that thermalization following a quantum quench in a
strongly correlated quantum system is closely connected to many-body
delocalization in the space of quasi-particles. This scenario is tested
in the anisotropic Heisenberg spin chain with different types of
integrability-breaking terms. We first quantify the deviations from
integrability by analyzing the level spacing statistics and the inverse
participation ratio of the system's eigenstates. We then focus on
thermalization, by studying the dynamics after a sudden quench of the
anisotropy parameter. Our numerical simulations clearly support the
conjecture, as long as the integrability-breaking term acts
homogeneously on the quasiparticle space, in such a way as to induce ergodicity over all the relevant Hilbert space
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