In a recent letter [J. Cardy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 220401 (2014)], the author made a very interesting observation that complete revivals of quantum states after quantum quench can happen in a period that is a fraction of the system size. This is possible for critical systems that can be described by minimal conformal field theories with central charge
c<1. In this paper, we show that these complete revivals are impossible in microscopic realizations of those minimal models. We will prove the absence of the mentioned complete revivals for the critical transverse field Ising chain analytically, and present numerical results for the critical line of the XY chain. In particular, for the considered initial states, we will show that criticality has no significant effect in partial revivals. We also comment on the applicability of quasiparticle picture to determine the period of the partial revivals qualitatively. In particular, we detect a regime in the phase diagram of the XY chain in which one can not determine the period of the partial revivals using the quasiparticle picture.
A quantum phase transition is generally thought to imprint distinctive characteristics on the nonequilibrium dynamics of a closed quantum system. Specifically, the Loschmidt echo after a sudden quench to a quantum critical point-measuring the time dependence of the overlap between initial and time-evolved states-is expected to exhibit an accelerated relaxation followed by periodic revivals. We here introduce a new exactly solvable model, the extended Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, the Loschmidt echo of which provides a counterexample. A parallell analysis of the quench dynamics of the three-site spin-interacting XY model allows us to pinpoint the conditions under which a periodic Loschmidt revival actually appears.
We study the universal real-time relaxation behaviors of a long-range quantum XY chain following a quench. Our research includes both the noncritical and critical quench. In the case of noncritical quench, i.e., neither the initial state nor the postquench Hamiltonian is at a critical point of equilibrium phase transition, a quench to the commensurate phase or incommensurate phase gives a scaling of
t−3/2 or
t−1/2, respectively, which is the same as the counterpart of the short-range XY model. However, for a quench to the boundary line between the commensurate and incommensurate phases, the scaling law
t−μ may be different from the
t−3/4 law of the counterpart of the short-range model. More interestingly, the decaying exponent
μ may depend on the choice of the parameters of the postquench Hamiltonian because of the different asymptotic behaviors of the energy spectrum. Furthermore, in certain cases, the scaling behavior may be outside the range of predictions made by the stationary phase approximation, because an inflection point emerges in the energy spectrum. For the critical quench, i.e., the initial state or the postquench Hamiltonian is at a critical point of equilibrium phase transition, the aforementioned scaling law
t−μ may be changed because of the gap-closing property of the energy spectrum of the critical point.
We study the Loschmidt echo (LE) of a coupled system consisting of a central spin and its surrounding environment described by a general
XY spin-chain model. The quantum dynamics of the LE is shown to be remarkably influenced by the quantum criticality of the spin chain. In particular, the decaying behavior of the LE is found to be controlled by the anisotropy parameter of the spin chain. Furthermore, we show that due to the coupling to the spin chain, the ground-state Berry phase for the central spin becomes nonanalytical and its derivative with respect to the magnetic parameter $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ in spin chain diverges along the critical line $\ensuremath{\lambda}=1$, which suggests an alternative measurement of the quantum criticality of the spin chain.
We study the time evolution of spin squeezing in the one-dimensional spin-1/2 XY model subject to a sudden quantum quench of a transverse magnetic field. The initial state is selected from the ground state phase diagram of the model, consisting of ferro- and paramagnetic phases separated by a critical value of the transverse field. Our analysis, based on exact results for the model, reveals that by a proper choice of protocol, a quantum quench from an unsqueezed state can create spin-squeezed nonequilibrium states. Moreover, we identify a nonanalyticity in the long-time average of the spin-squeezing parameter when quenching to the equilibrium quantum critical point. This suggests that the ferro- and paramagnetic phases also define distinct phases for how the transverse field redistributes quantum fluctuations among the spin components away from equilibrium.
We analytically and numerically study the Loschmidt echo and the dynamical order parameters in a spin chain with a deconfined phase transition between a dimerized state and a ferromagnetic phase. For quenches from a dimerized state to a ferromagnetic phase, we find that the model can exhibit a dynamical quantum phase transition characterized by an associating dimerized order parameter. In particular, when quenching the system from the Majumdar-Ghosh state to the ferromagnetic Ising state, we find an exact mapping into the classical Ising chain for a quench from the paramagnetic phase to the classical Ising phase by analytically calculating the Loschmidt echo and the dynamical order parameters. By contrast, for quenches from a ferromagnetic state to a dimerized state, the system relaxes very fast so that the dynamical quantum transition may exist on only a short timescale. We reveal that the dynamical quantum phase transition can occur in systems with two broken symmetry phases and the quench dynamics may be independent of equilibrium phase transitions.