Ising Quantum Chains

The aim of this article is to give a pedagogical introduction to the exact equilibrium and nonequilibrium properties of free fermionic quantum spin chains. In a first part we present in full details the canonical diagonalisation procedure and review quickly the equilibrium dynamical properties. The phase diagram is analysed and possible phase transitions are discussed. The two next chapters are concerned with the effect of aperiodicity and quenched disorder on the critical properties of the quantum chain. The remaining part is devoted to the nonequilibrium dynamical behaviour of such quantum chains relaxing from a nonequilibrium pure initial state. In particular, a special attention is made on the relaxation of transverse magnetization. Two-time linear response functions and correlation functions are also considered, giving insights on the nature of the final nonequilibrium stationnary state. The possibility of aging is also discussed.Comment: Habilitation thesi

Scaling behaviour of the relaxation in quantum chains

We consider the nonequilibrium time evolution of the transverse magnetization in the critical Ising and $XX$ quantum chains. For some inhomogeneously magnetized initial states we derive analytically the transverse magnetization profiles and show that they evolve into scaling forms in the long-time limit. In particular it is seen that the Ising chain exhibits some similarities with the conserved dynamics $XX$ chain. That is, after a transient regime, the total residual magnetization in the transverse direction is also conserved in the Ising case. A class of general initial states is also considered.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, accepted in EPJ

Persistent currents in mesoscopic rings and conformal invariance

The effect of point defects on persistent currents in mesoscopic systems is studied in a simple tight-binding model. Using an analogy with the treatment of the critical quantum Ising chain with defects, conformal invariance techniques are employed to relate the persitent current amplitude to the Hamiltonian spectrum jsut above the Fermi energy. From this, the dependence of the current on the magnetic flux is found exactly for a ring with one or two point defects. The effect of an aperiodic modulation of the ring, generated through a binary substitution sequence, on the persistent current is also studied. The flux-dependence of the current is found to vary remarkably between the Fibonacci and the Thue-Morse sequences.Comment: 18 pages, Latex with epsf, including 5 figure

Scaling and front dynamics in Ising quantum chains

We study the relaxation dynamics of a quantum Ising chain initially prepared in a product of canonical states corresponding each to an equilibrium state of part of the chain at a given temperature. We focus our attention on the transverse magnetization for which a general expression is given. Explicite results are given for the completely factorized initial state, corresponding to a situation where all the spins are thermalized independently, and for the two-temperatures initial state, where part of the chain called the system is thermalized at a temperature $T_s$ and the remaining part is at a temperature $T_b$.Comment: 7 pages, submitted to EPJ

Off equilibrium dynamics in 2d-XY system

We study the non-equilibrium time evolution of the classical XY spin model in two dimensions. The two-time autocorrelation and linear response functions are considered for systems initially prepared in a high temperature state and in a completely ordered state. After a quench into the critical phase, we determine, via Monte Carlo simulations, the time-evolution of these quantities and extract the temperature dependence of the slope of the parametric plot susceptibility/correlation in the asymptotic regime. This slope is usually identified with the infinite fluctuation-dissipation ratio which measures the violation to the equilibrium fluctuation-dissipation theorem. However, a direct measure of this ratio leads to a vanishing value