19 research outputs found
Quantum Entangled Dark Solitons Formed by Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices
Inspired by experiments on Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices, we
study the quantum evolution of dark soliton initial conditions in the context
of the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. An extensive set of quantum measures is
utilized in our analysis, including von Neumann and generalized quantum
entropies, quantum depletion, and the pair correlation function. We find that
quantum effects cause the soliton to fill in. Moreover, soliton-soliton
collisions become inelastic, in strong contrast to the predictions of
mean-field theory. These features show that the lifetime and collision
properties of dark solitons in optical lattices provide clear signals of
quantum effects.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; version appearing in PRL, only minor changes from
v
Partial breakdown of quantum thermalization in a Hubbard-like model
We study the possible breakdown of quantum thermalization in a model of
itinerant electrons on a one-dimensional chain without disorder, with both spin
and charge degrees of freedom. The eigenstates of this model exhibit peculiar
properties in the entanglement entropy, the apparent scaling of which is
modified from a "volume law" to an "area law" after performing a partial,
site-wise measurement on the system. These properties and others suggest that
this model realizes a new, non-thermal phase of matter, known as a quantum
disentangled liquid (QDL). The putative existence of this phase has striking
implications for the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics.Comment: As accepted to PR
Quantum Many-Body Dynamics of Dark Solitons in Optical Lattices
We present a fully quantum many-body treatment of dark solitons formed by
ultracold bosonic atoms in one-dimensional optical lattices. Using
time-evolving block decimation to simulate the single-band Bose-Hubbard
Hamiltonian, we consider the quantum dynamics of density and phase engineered
dark solitons as well as the quantum evolution of mean-field dark solitons
injected into the quantum model. The former approach directly models how one
may create quantum entangled dark solitons in experiment. While we have already
presented results regarding the latter approach elsewhere [Phys. Rev. Lett.
{\bf 103}, 140403 (2009)], we expand upon those results in this work. In both
cases, quantum fluctuations cause the dark soliton to fill in and may induce an
inelasticity in soliton-soliton collisions. Comparisons are made to the
Bogoliubov theory which predicts depletion into an anomalous mode that fills in
the soliton. Our many-body treatment allows us to go beyond the Bogoliubov
approximation and calculate explicitly the dynamics of the system's natural
orbitals.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures -- v3 has only minor changes from v2 -- this is
the print versio
Partial breakdown of quantum thermalization in a Hubbard-like model
We study the possible breakdown of quantum thermalization in a model of itinerant electrons on a one-dimensional chain without disorder, with both spin and charge degrees of freedom. The eigenstates of this model exhibit peculiar properties in the entanglement entropy, the apparent scaling of which is modified from a “volume law” to an “area law” after performing a partial, site-wise measurement on the system. These properties and others suggest that this model realizes a new, nonthermal phase of matter, known as a quantum disentangled liquid (QDL). The putative existence of this phase has striking implications for the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics
Matrix product decomposition and classical simulation of quantum dynamics in the presence of a symmetry
We propose a refined matrix product state representation for many-body
quantum states that are invariant under SU(2) transformations, and indicate how
to extend the time-evolving block decimation (TEBD) algorithm in order to
simulate time evolution in an SU(2) invariant system. The resulting algorithm
is tested in a critical quantum spin chain and shown to be significantly more
efficient than the standard TEBD.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Non-Fermi-liquid d-wave metal phase of strongly interacting electrons
Developing a theoretical framework for conducting electronic fluids
qualitatively distinct from those described by Landau's Fermi-liquid theory is
of central importance to many outstanding problems in condensed matter physics.
One such problem is that, above the transition temperature and near optimal
doping, high-transition-temperature copper-oxide superconductors exhibit
`strange metal' behaviour that is inconsistent with being a traditional Landau
Fermi liquid. Indeed, a microscopic theory of a strange-metal quantum phase
could shed new light on the interesting low-temperature behaviour in the
pseudogap regime and on the d-wave superconductor itself. Here we present a
theory for a specific example of a strange metal---the 'd-wave metal'. Using
variational wavefunctions, gauge theoretic arguments, and ultimately
large-scale density matrix renormalization group calculations, we show that
this remarkable quantum phase is the ground state of a reasonable microscopic
Hamiltonian---the usual t-J model with electron kinetic energy and two-spin
exchange supplemented with a frustrated electron `ring-exchange' term,
which we here examine extensively on the square lattice two-leg ladder. These
findings constitute an explicit theoretical example of a genuine
non-Fermi-liquid metal existing as the ground state of a realistic model.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures: 6 pages, 7 figures of main text + 16 pages, 5
figures of Supplementary Information; this is approximately the version
published in Nature, minus various subedits in the main tex
Strange metals and the AdS/CFT correspondence
I begin with a review of quantum impurity models in condensed matter physics,
in which a localized spin degree of freedom is coupled to an interacting
conformal field theory in d = 2 spatial dimensions. Their properties are
similar to those of supersymmetric generalizations which can be solved by the
AdS/CFT correspondence; the low energy limit of the latter models is described
by a AdS2 geometry. Then I turn to Kondo lattice models, which can be described
by a mean- field theory obtained by a mapping to a quantum impurity coupled to
a self-consistent environment. Such a theory yields a 'fractionalized Fermi
liquid' phase of conduction electrons coupled to a critical spin liquid state,
and is an attractive mean-field theory of strange metals. The recent
holographic description of strange metals with a AdS2 x R2 geometry is argued
to be related to such mean-field solutions of Kondo lattice models.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures; Plenary talk at Statphys24, Cairns, Australia,
July 2010; (v2) added refs; (v3) more ref
simple-dmrg/simple-dmrg: Simple DMRG 1.0
SIMPLE DMRG tutorial, created for the Trieste summer school on quantum spin liquids