Lindblad non-universality of measurement phases and phase transitions

Entanglement phase transitions in hybrid quantum circuits are generally argued to be properties of the individual trajectories rather than measurement-averaged dynamics, despite the fact that results of measurements are not used for feedback in the steady state. Here, we explicitly demonstrate this difference by constructing a family of hybrid quantum circuits with identical measurement-averaged dynamics that give different phases and phase transitions. We propose measurement-averaged destruction of Bell state entanglement as a proxy for determining which hybrid circuit yields the lowest-entanglement dynamics and show that it holds numerically for the measurements we consider. We comment on implications for quantum computing and noisy quantum circuits

Dynamic trapping near a quantum critical point

The study of dynamics in closed quantum systems has recently been revitalized by the emergence of experimental systems that are well-isolated from their environment. In this paper, we consider the closed-system dynamics of an archetypal model: spins near a second order quantum critical point, which are traditionally described by the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. Imbuing the driving field with Newtonian dynamics, we find that the full closed system exhibits a robust new phenomenon -- dynamic critical trapping -- in which the system is self-trapped near the critical point due to efficient absorption of field kinetic energy by heating the quantum spins. We quantify limits in which this phenomenon can be observed and generalize these results by developing a Kibble-Zurek scaling theory that incorporates the dynamic field. Our findings can potentially be interesting in the context of early universe physics, where the role of the driving field is played by the inflaton or a modulus.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures + 5 page supplemen

Enabling Adiabatic Passages Between Disjoint Regions in Parameter Space through Topological Transitions

We explore topological transitions in parameter space in order to enable adiabatic passages between regions adiabatically disconnected within a given parameter manifold. To this end, we study the Hamiltonian of two coupled qubits interacting with external magnetic fields, and make use of the analogy between the Berry curvature and magnetic fields in parameter space, with spectrum degeneracies associated to magnetic charges. Symmetry-breaking terms induce sharp topological transitions on these charge distributions, and we show how one can exploit this effect to bypass crossing degeneracies. We also investigate the curl of the Berry curvature, an interesting but as of yet not fully explored object, which together with its divergence uniquely defines this field. Finally, we suggest a simple method for measuring the Berry curvature, thereby showing how one can experimentally verify our results.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figure

Strong-Disorder Renormalization Group for Periodically Driven Systems

Quenched randomness can lead to robust non-equilibrium phases of matter in periodically driven (Floquet) systems. Analyzing transitions between such dynamical phases requires a method capable of treating the twin complexities of disorder and discrete time-translation symmetry. We introduce a real-space renormalization group approach, asymptotically exact in the strong-disorder limit, and exemplify its use on the periodically driven interacting quantum Ising model. We analyze the universal physics near the critical lines and multicritical point of this model, and demonstrate the robustness of our results to the inclusion of weak interactions.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures; published versio

Absence of Thermalization in Finite Isolated Interacting Floquet Systems

Conventional wisdom suggests that the long time behavior of isolated interacting periodically driven (Floquet) systems is a featureless maximal entropy state characterized by an infinite temperature. Efforts to thwart this uninteresting fixed point include adding sufficient disorder to realize a Floquet many-body localized phase or working in a narrow region of drive frequencies to achieve glassy non-thermal behavior at long time. Here we show that in clean systems the Floquet eigenstates can exhibit non-thermal behavior due to finite system size. We consider a one-dimensional system of spinless fermions with nearest-neighbor interactions where the interaction term is driven. Interestingly, even with no static component of the interaction, the quasienergy spectrum contains gaps and a significant fraction of the Floquet eigenstates, at all quasienergies, have non-thermal average doublon densities. We show that this non-thermal behavior arises due to emergent integrability at large interaction strength and discuss how the integrability breaks down with power-law dependence on system size.Comment: 10+8 pages, 13 figure