Using the mapping of the Fokker-Planck description of classical stochastic dynamics onto a quantum Hamiltonian, we argue that a dynamical glass transition in the former must have a precise definition in terms of a quantum phase transition in the latter. At the dynamical level, the transition corresponds to a collapse of the excitation spectrum at a critical point. At the static level, the transition affects the ground-state wave function: while in some cases it could be picked up by the expectation value of a local operator, in others the order may be nonlocal and impossible to be determined with any local probe. Here we instead propose to use concepts from quantum information theory that are not centered around local order parameters, such as fidelity and entanglement measures. We show that for systems derived from the mapping of classical stochastic dynamics, singularities in the fidelity susceptibility translate directly into singularities in the heat capacity of the classical system. In classical glassy systems with an extensive number of metastable states, we find that the prefactor of the area law term in the entanglement entropy jumps across the transition. We also discuss how entanglement measures can be used to detect a growing correlation length that diverges at the transition. Finally, we illustrate how static order can be hidden in systems with a macroscopically large number of degenerate equilibrium states by constructing a three-dimensional lattice gauge model with only short-range interactions but with a finite temperature continuous phase transition into a massively degenerate phase.
Using the mapping of the Fokker-Planck description of classical stochastic dynamics onto a quantum Hamiltonian, we argue that a dynamical glass transition in the former must have a precise definition in terms of a quantum phase transition in the latter. At the dynamical level, the transition corresponds to a collapse of the excitation spectrum at a critical point. At the static level, the transition affects the ground-state wave function: while in some cases it could be picked up by the expectation value of a local operator, in others the order may be nonlocal and impossible to be determined with any local probe. Here we instead propose to use concepts from quantum information theory that are not centered around local order parameters, such as fidelity and entanglement measures. We show that for systems derived from the mapping of classical stochastic dynamics, singularities in the fidelity susceptibility translate directly into singularities in the heat capacity of the classical system. In classical glassy systems with an extensive number of metastable states, we find that the prefactor of the area law term in the entanglement entropy jumps across the transition. We also discuss how entanglement measures can be used to detect a growing correlation length that diverges at the transition. Finally, we illustrate how static order can be hidden in systems with a macroscopically large number of degenerate equilibrium states by constructing a three-dimensional lattice gauge model with only short-range interactions but with a finite temperature continuous phase transition into a massively degenerate phase.
A superglass is a phase of matter which is characterized at the same time by superfluidity and a frozen amorphous structure.We introduce a model of interacting bosons in three dimensions that displays this phase unambiguously and that can be analyzed exactly or using controlled approximations.Employing a mapping between quantum Hamiltonians and classical Fokker-Planck operators, we show that the ground-state wave function of the quantum model is proportional to the Boltzmann measure of classical hard spheres.This connection allows us to obtain quantitative results on static and dynamic quantum correlation functions.In particular, by translating known results on the glassy dynamics of Brownian hard spheres we work out the properties of the superglass phase and of the quantum phase transition between the superfluid and the superglass phase.
A superglass is a phase of matter which is characterized at the same time by superfluidity and a frozen amorphous structure. We introduce a model of interacting bosons in three dimensions that displays this phase unambiguously and that can be analyzed exactly or using controlled approximations. Employing a mapping between quantum Hamiltonians and classical Fokker-Planck operators, we show that the ground-state wave function of the quantum model is proportional to the Boltzmann measure of classical hard spheres. This connection allows us to obtain quantitative results on static and dynamic quantum correlation functions. In particular, by translating known results on the glassy dynamics of Brownian hard spheres we work out the properties of the superglass phase and of the quantum phase transition between the superfluid and the superglass phase.
Abstract We investigate several entanglement-related quantities at finite-temperature criticality in the three-dimensional quantum spherical model, both as a function of temperature T and of the quantum parameter g , which measures the strength of quantum fluctuations. While the von Neumann and the Rényi entropies exhibit a volume-law for any g and T , the mutual information obeys an area law. The prefactors of the volume-law and of the area-law are regular across the transition, reflecting that universal singular terms vanish at the transition. This implies that the mutual information is dominated by nonuniversal contributions. This hampers its use as a witness of criticality, at least in the spherical model. We also study the logarithmic negativity. For any value of g , T , the negativity exhibits an area-law. The negativity vanishes deep in the paramagnetic phase, it is larger at small temperature, and it decreases upon increasing the temperature. For any g , it exhibits the so-called sudden death, i.e. it is exactly zero for large enough T . The vanishing of the negativity defines a ‘death line’, which we characterise analytically at small g . Importantly, for any finite T the area-law prefactor is regular across the transition, whereas it develops a cusp-like singularity in the limit . Finally, we consider the single-particle entanglement and negativity spectra. The vast majority of the levels are regular across the transition. Only the larger ones exhibit singularities. These are related to the presence of a zero mode, which reflects the symmetry breaking. This implies the presence of sub-leading singular terms in the entanglement entropies. Interestingly, since the larger levels do not contribute to the negativity, sub-leading singular corrections are expected to be suppressed for the negativity.
We investigate several entanglement-related quantities at finite-temperature criticality in the three-dimensional quantum spherical model, both as a function of temperature T and of the quantum parameter g, which measures the strength of quantum fluctuations. While the von Neumann and the R\\'enyi entropies exhibit the volume-law for any g and T, the mutual information obeys an area law. The prefactors of the volume-law and of the area-law are regular across the transition, reflecting that universal singular terms vanish at the transition. This implies that the mutual information is dominated by nonuniversal contributions. This hampers its use as a witness of criticality, at least in the spherical model. We also study the logarithmic negativity. For any value of g,T, the negativity exhibits an area-law. The negativity vanishes deep in the paramagnetic phase, it is larger at small temperature, and it decreases upon increasing the temperature. For any g, it exhibits the so-called sudden death, i.e., it is exactly zero for large enough T. The vanishing of the negativity defines a "death line", which we characterise analytically at small g. Importantly, for any finite T the area-law prefactor is regular across the transition, whereas it develops a cusp-like singularity in the limit Tto0. Finally, we consider the single-particle entanglement and negativity spectra. The vast majority of the levels are regular across the transition. Only the larger ones exhibit singularities. These are related to the presence of a zero mode, which reflects the symmetry breaking. This implies the presence of sub-leading singular terms in the entanglement entropies. Interestingly, since the larger levels do not contribute to the negativity, sub-leading singular corrections are expected to be suppressed for the negativity.
Many electronic systems (e.g., the cuprate superconductors and heavy fermions) exhibit striking features in their dynamical response over a prominent range of experimental parameters. While there are some empirical suggestions of particular increasing length scales that accompany such transitions in some cases, this identification is not universal and in numerous instances no large correlation length is evident. To better understand, as a matter of principle, such behavior in quantum systems, we extend a known mapping (earlier studied in stochastic or supersymmetric quantum mechanics) between finite temperature classical Fokker-Planck systems and related quantum systems at zero temperature to include general nonequilibrium dynamics. Unlike Feynman mappings or stochastic quantization methods in field theories (as well as more recent holographic type dualities), the classical systems that we consider and their quantum duals reside in the same number of space-time dimensions. The upshot of our very broad and rigorous result is that a Wick rotation exactly relates (i) the dynamics in general finite temperature classical dissipative systems to (ii) zero temperature dynamics in the corresponding dual many-body quantum systems. Using this correspondence, we illustrate that, even in the absence of imposed disorder, many continuum quantum fluid systems (and possible lattice counterparts) may exhibit a zero-point ``quantum dynamical heterogeneity'' wherein the dynamics, at a given instant, is spatially nonuniform. While the static length scales accompanying this phenomenon do not seem to exhibit a clear divergence in standard correlation functions, the length scale of the dynamical heterogeneities can increase dramatically. We further study ``quantum jamming'' and illustrate how a hard-core bosonic system can undergo a zero temperature quantum critical metal-to-insulator-type transition with an extremely large effective dynamical exponent z>4 that is consistent with length scales that increase far more slowly than the relaxation time as a putative critical transition is approached. Similar results may hold for spin-liquid-type as well as interacting electronic systems. We suggest ways to analyze experimental data in order to adduce such phenomena. Our approach may be used to analyze other quenched quantum systems.
The theory of statistical mechanics provides a powerful conceptual framework within which the relevant (macroscopic) features of systems at equilibrium can be described. As there is currently no equivalent capable of encompassing the much richer class of non-equilibrium phenomena, research in this direction proceeds mainly on an instance-by-instance basis. The aim of this Thesis is to describe in some detail three such attempts, which involve different dynamical aspects of classical and quantum systems. As summarised below, each of the last three Chapters of this document delves into one of these different topics, while Chapter 2 provides a brief introduction on the study of non-equilibrium dynamics. In Chapter 3 we investigate the purely relaxational dynamics of classical critical ferromagnetic systems in the proximity of surfaces, paying particular attention to the effects that the latter induce on the early stages of the evolution following an abrupt change in the temperature of the sample. When the latter ends close enough to the critical value which separates the paramagnetic from the ferromagnetic phase, it effectively introduces a temporal boundary which can be treated as if it were a surface. Within this picture, we highlight the emergence of novel effects near the effective edge formed by the intersection of the two spatial and temporal boundaries. Our findings are apparently in disagreement with previous predictions which were based on the assumption that the presence of such an edge would not affect the scaling behaviour of observables; in order to explain this discrepancy, we propose an alternative for the original power-counting argument which, at least, correctly predicts the emergence of novel field-theoretical divergences in our one-loop calculations. We show that said singularities are associated with the scaling at the edge. Moreover, by encoding our findings in a boundary renormalisation group framework, we argue that the new predicted behaviour represents a universal feature associated to the short-distance expansion of the order parameter of the transition near the edge; we also calculate explicitly its anomalous dimension at the first-order in a dimensional expansion. As a qualitative feature, this anomalous dimension depends on the type of phase transition occurring at the surface. We exploit this fact in order to provide numerical support to our predictions via Monte Carlo simulations of the dynamical behaviour of a three-dimensional Ising model. The main results reported in Chap. 3 have appeared in Ref. [1]. In Chapter 4 we revisit the Euclidean mapping to imaginary times which has been recently proposed [2, 3] as an alternative for approaching the problem of quantum dynamics following a quench. This is expected to allow one to reformulate the original problem as a static one confined in a film geometry. We show that this interpretation actually holds only if the initial state of the dynamics is pure. Statistical mixtures, instead, intertwine the effects due to the two boundaries, which therefore cannot be regarded as being independent. We emphasize that, although the aforementioned reinterpretation as a confined static problem fails, one is still able, in principle, to write down and solve the corresponding equations. We also discuss in some detail the relation between this approach and the real-time field-theoretical one which makes use of the two-time Keldysh contour. For this purpose, we study the analytical structure of relevant observables — such as correlation functions — in the complex plane of times, identifying a subdivision of this domain into several sectors which depend on the ordering of the imaginary parts of the involved time coordinates. Within each of these subdomains, the analytic continuation to the real axis provides in principle a different result. This feature allows one to reconstruct from the Euclidean formalism all possible non-time-ordered functions, which in particular include all those which can be calculated via the Keldysh two-time formalism. Moreover, we give a prescription on how to retrieve response functions, discussing some simple examples and rationalising some recent numerical data obtained for one of these observables in a one-dimensional quantum Ising chain [4]. We also highlight the emergence of a light-cone effect fairly similar to the one previously found for correlation functions [2], which therefore provides further confirmation to the fact that information travels across the system in the form of the entanglement of quasi-particles produced by the quenching procedure. We have reported part of this analysis in Ref. [5]. Chapter 5 presents part of our recent work on effective relaxation in quantum systems following a quench and on the observed prethermalisation. We analyse the effects caused by the introduction of a long-range integrability-breaking interaction in the early stages of the dynamics of an otherwise integrable quantum spin chain following a quench in the magnetic field. By employing a suitable transformation, we redefine the theory in terms of a fully-connected model of hard-core bosons, which allows us to exploit the (generically) low density of excitations for rendering our model exactly solvable (in a numerical sense, i.e., by numerically diagonalising an exact matrix). We verify that, indeed, as long as the parameters of the quench are not too close to the critical point, the low-density approximation captures the dynamical features of the elementary operators, highlighting the appearance of marked plateaux in their dynamics, which we reinterpret as the emergence of a prethermal regime in the original model. As expected, the latter behaviour is reflected also on extensive observables which can be constructed as appropriate combinations of the mode populations. For these quantities, the typical approach to the quasi-stationary value is algebraic with exponent a ≈ 3, independently of the size of the system, the strength of the interaction and the amplitude of the magnetic field (as long as it is kept far from the critical point). The plateaux mentioned above last until a recurrence time — which can be approximately identified with tR ≈ N/2 for single modes and t′R ≈ N/4 for extensive quantities — after which quantum oscillations due to the finite size of the chain reappear. Our procedure allows us to shed some light over prethermal features without having to considerably limit the size of the system, which we can choose to be quite large, as we discuss in Ref. [6].