Quantum Hall valley Ferromagnets as a platform for topologically protected quantum memory

Materials hosting topologically protected non-Abelian zero modes offer the exciting possibility of storing and manipulating quantum information in a manner that is protected from decoherence at the hardware level. In this work, we study the possibility of realizing such excitations along line defects in certain fractional quantum Hall states in multi-valley systems. Such line defects have been recently observed experimentally between valley polarized Hall states on the surface of Bi(111), and excitations near these defects appear to be gapped (gapless) depending on the presence (absence) of interaction-induced gapping perturbations constrained by momentum selection rules, while the position of defects is determined by strain. In this work, we use these selection rules to show that a hybrid structure involving a superlattice imposed on such a multi-valley quantum Hall surface realizes non-Abelian anyons which can then be braided by modulating strain locally to move line defects. Specifically, we explore such defects in Abelian fractional quantum Hall states of the form {\nu} = 2/m using a K-matrix approach, and identify relevant gapping perturbations. Charged modes on these line defects remain gapped, while charge netural valley pseudospin modes may be gapped with the aid of two (mutually orthogonal) superlattices which pin non-commuting fields. When these superlattices are alternated along the line defect, non-Abelian zero modes result at points where the gapping perturbation changes. Given that these pseudospin modes carry no net physical charge or spin, the setup eschews utilizing superconducting and magnetic elements to engineer gapping perturbations. We provide a scheme to braid these modes using strain modulation, and confirm that the resulting unitaries satisfy a representation of the braid group.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures; comments welcom

Spatiotemporal Quenches in Long-Range Hamiltonians

Spatiotemporal quenches are efficient at preparing ground states of critical Hamiltonians that have emergent low-energy descriptions with Lorentz invariance. The critical transverse field Ising model with nearest neighbor interactions, for instance, maps to free fermions with a relativistic low energy dispersion. However, spin models realized in artificial quantum simulators based on neutral Rydberg atoms, or trapped ions, generically exhibit long range power-law decay of interactions with $J(r) \sim 1/r^\alpha$ for a wide range of $\alpha$. In this work, we study the fate of spatiotemporal quenches in these models with a fixed velocity $v$ for the propagation of the quench front, using the numerical time-dependent variational principle. For $\alpha \gtrsim 3$, where the critical theory is suggested to have a dynamical critical exponent $z = 1$, our simulations show that optimal cooling is achieved when the front velocity $v$ approaches $c$, the effective speed of excitations in the critical model. The energy density is inhomogeneously distributed in space, with prominent hot regions populated by excitations co-propagating with the quench front, and cold regions populated by counter-propagating excitations. Lowering $\alpha$ largely blurs the boundaries between these regions. For $\alpha < 3$, we find that the Doppler cooling effect disappears, as expected from renormalization group results for the critical model which suggest a dispersion $\omega \sim q^z$ with $z < 1$. Instead, we show that excitations are controlled by two relevant length scales whose ratio is related to that of the front velocity to a threshold velocity that ultimately determines the adiabaticity of the quench.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, 3 appendice

Localization and transport in a strongly driven Anderson insulator

We study localization and charge dynamics in a monochromatically driven one-dimensional Anderson insulator focussing on the low-frequency, strong-driving regime. We study this problem using a mapping of the Floquet Hamiltonian to a hopping problem with correlated disorder in one higher harmonic-space dimension. We show that (i) resonances in this model correspond to \emph{adiabatic} Landau-Zener (LZ) transitions that occur due to level crossings between lattice sites over the course of dynamics; (ii) the proliferation of these resonances leads to dynamics that \emph{appear} diffusive over a single drive cycle, but the system always remains localized; (iii) actual charge transport occurs over many drive cycles due to slow dephasing between these LZ orbits and is logarithmic-in-time, with a crucial role being played by far-off Mott-like resonances; and (iv) applying a spatially-varying random phase to the drive tends to decrease localization, suggestive of weak-localization physics. We derive the conditions for the strong driving regime, determining the parametric dependencies of the size of Floquet eigenstates, and time-scales associated with the dynamics, and corroborate the findings using both numerical scaling collapses and analytical arguments.Comment: 7 pages + references, 6 figure

Fast preparation of critical ground states using superluminal fronts

We propose a spatio-temporal quench protocol that allows for the fast preparation of ground states of gapless models with Lorentz invariance. Assuming the system initially resides in the ground state of a corresponding massive model, we show that a superluminally-moving `front' that $\textit{locally}$ quenches the mass, leaves behind it (in space) a state $\textit{arbitrarily close}$ to the ground state of the gapless model. Importantly, our protocol takes time $\mathcal{O} \left( L \right)$ to produce the ground state of a system of size $\sim L^d$ ($d$ spatial dimensions), while a fully adiabatic protocol requires time $\sim \mathcal{O} \left( L^2 \right)$ to produce a state with exponential accuracy in $L$. The physics of the dynamical problem can be understood in terms of relativistic rarefaction of excitations generated by the mass front. We provide proof-of-concept by solving the proposed quench exactly for a system of free bosons in arbitrary dimensions, and for free fermions in $d = 1$. We discuss the role of interactions and UV effects on the free-theory idealization, before numerically illustrating the usefulness of the approach via simulations on the quantum Heisenberg spin-chain.Comment: 4.25 + 10 pages, 3 + 2 figure

Signatures of Majorana Zero-Modes in an isolated one-dimensional superconductor

We examine properties of the mean-field wave function of the one-dimensional Kitaev model supporting Majorana Zero Modes (MZMs) \emph{when restricted} to a fixed number of particles. Such wave functions can in fact be realized as exact ground states of interacting number-conserving Hamiltonians and amount to a more realistic description of the finite isolated superconductors. Akin to their mean-field parent, the fixed-number wave functions encode a single electron spectral function at zero energy that decays exponentially away from the edges, with a localization length that agrees with the mean-field value. Based purely on the structure of the number-projected ground states, we construct the fixed particle number generalization of the MZM operators. They can be used to compute the edge tunneling conductance; however, notably the value of the zero-bias conductance remains the same as in the mean-field case, quantized to $2e^2/h$. We also compute the topological entanglement entropy for the number-projected wave functions and find that it contains a `robust' $\log(2)$ component as well as a logarithmic correction to the mean field result, which depends on the precise partitioning used to compute it. The presence of the logarithmic term in the entanglement entropy indicates the absence of a spectral gap above the ground state; as one introduces fluctuations in the number of particles, the correction vanishes smoothly.Comment: 9+3 pages, 4+1 figure

Topology- and symmetry-protected domain wall conduction in quantum Hall nematics

We consider domain walls in nematic quantum Hall ferromagnets predicted to form in multivalley semiconductors, recently probed by scanning tunnelling microscopy experiments on Bi(111) surfaces. We show that the domain wall properties depend sensitively on the filling factor $\nu$ of the underlying (integer) quantum Hall states. For $\nu=1$ and in the absence of impurity scattering we argue that the wall hosts a single-channel Luttinger liquid whose gaplessness is a consequence of valley and charge conservation. For $\nu=2$, it supports a two-channel Luttinger liquid, which for sufficiently strong interactions enters a symmetry-preserving thermal metal phase with a charge gap coexisting with gapless neutral intervalley modes. The domain wall physics in this state is identical to that of a bosonic topological insulator protected by $U(1)\times U(1)$ symmetry, and we provide a formal mapping between these problems. We discuss other unusual properties and experimental signatures of these `anomalous' one-dimensional systems.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, published versio