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arXiv:1309.2308 · Physical Review Letters

Breakdown of Quasilocality in Long-Range Quantum Lattice Models

Jens Eisert, Mauritz van den Worm, Salvatore R. Manmana, Michael Kästner

Published Dec 26, 2013• 164 citations
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Abstract

We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of correlations in quantum lattice models in the presence of long-range interactions decaying asymptotically as a power law. For exponents larger than the lattice dimensionality, a Lieb-Robinson-type bound effectively restricts the spreading of correlations to a causal region, but allows supersonic propagation. We show that this decay is not only sufficient but also necessary. Using tools of quantum metrology, for any exponents smaller than the lattice dimension, we construct Hamiltonians giving rise to quantum channels with capacities not restricted to a causal region. An analytical analysis of long-range Ising models illustrates the disappearance of the causal region and the creation of correlations becoming distance independent. Numerical results obtained using matrix product state methods for the XXZ spin chain reveal the presence of a sound cone for large exponents and supersonic propagation for small ones. In all models we analyzed, the fast spreading of correlations follows a power law, but not the exponential increase of the long-range Lieb-Robinson bound.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.111.260401

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We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of correlations in quantum lattice models in the presence of long-range interactions decaying asymptotically as a power law. For exponents larger than the lattice dimensionality, a Lieb-Robinson-type bound effectively restricts the spreading of correlations to a causal region, but allows supersonic propagation. We show that this decay is not only sufficient but also necessary. Using tools of quantum metrology, for any exponents smaller than the lattice dimension, we construct Hamiltonians giving rise to quantum channels with capacities not restricted to a causal region. An analytical analysis of long-range Ising models illustrates the disappearance of the causal region and the creation of correlations becoming distance independent. Numerical results obtained using matrix product state methods for the XXZ spin chain reveal the presence of a sound cone for large exponents and supersonic propagation for small ones. In all models we analyzed, the fast spreading of correlations follows a power law, but not the exponential increase of the long-range Lieb-Robinson bound.
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The nonequilibrium response of a quantum many-body system defines its fundamental transport properties and how initially localized quantum information spreads. However, for long-range-interacting quantum systems little is known. We address this issue by analyzing a local quantum quench in the long-range Ising model in a transverse field, where interactions decay as a variable power law with distance ∝r(-α), α>0. Using complementary numerical and analytical techniques, we identify three dynamical regimes: short-range-like with an emerging light cone for α>2, weakly long range for 1<α<2 without a clear light cone but with a finite propagation speed of almost all excitations, and fully nonlocal for α<1 with instantaneous transmission of correlations. This last regime breaks generalized Lieb-Robinson bounds and thus locality. Numerical calculation of the entanglement spectrum demonstrates that the usual picture of propagating quasiparticles remains valid, allowing an intuitive interpretation of our findings via divergences of quasiparticle velocities. Our results may be tested in state-of-the-art trapped-ion experiments.
Lieb-Robinson-type bounds are reported for a large class of classical Hamiltonian lattice models. By a suitable rescaling of energy or time, such bounds can be constructed for interactions of arbitrarily long range. The bound quantifies the dependence of the system's dynamics on a perturbation of the initial state. The effect of the perturbation is found to be effectively restricted to the interior of a causal region of logarithmic shape, with only small, algebraically decaying effects in the exterior. A refined bound, sharper than conventional Lieb-Robinson bounds, is required to correctly capture the shape of the causal region, as confirmed by numerical results for classical long-range XYXYXY chains. We discuss the relevance of our findings for the relaxation to equilibrium of long-range interacting lattice models.
Understanding the dynamics of many-body systems is crucial for understanding, e.g., thermalization or transmission of information. Nevertheless, little is known in the case of quantum systems with long-range interactions. Here, we analyze the long-range Ising model in a transverse field, where interactions decay as a power-law with distance ∝r−α\propto r^{-\alpha}∝r−α, α>0\alpha>0α>0. Using complementary numerical and analytical techniques, we identify three dynamical regimes: short-range-like with an emerging light cone for α>2\alpha>2α>2; weakly long-range for 1<α<21<\alpha<21<α<2 without a clear light cone but with a finite propagation speed of excitations; and fully non-local for α<1\alpha<1α<1 with instantaneous transmission of correlations. This last regime breaks generalized Lieb--Robinson bounds. Numerical calculation of the entanglement spectrum demonstrates that the usual picture of propagating quasi-particles remains valid for long-range interactions. This allows an intuitive interpretation in terms of qualitative changes to the spin-wave dispersion, leading to diverging quasi-particle velocities in the long-range regime. Our results may be tested in state-of-the-art trapped-ion experiments.
We study correlations in fermionic lattice systems with long-range interactions in thermal equilibrium. We prove a bound on the correlation decay between anticommuting operators and generalize a long-range Lieb-Robinson-type bound. Our results show that in these systems of spatial dimension D with, not necessarily translation invariant, two-site interactions decaying algebraically with the distance with an exponent α≥2D, correlations between such operators decay at least algebraically to 0 with an exponent arbitrarily close to α at any nonzero temperature. Our bound is asymptotically tight, which we demonstrate by a high temperature expansion and by numerically analyzing density-density correlations in the one-dimensional quadratic (free, exactly solvable) Kitaev chain with long-range pairing.
Long-range quantum lattice systems often exhibit drastically different behavior than their short-range counterparts. In particular, because they do not satisfy the conditions for the Lieb-Robinson theorem, they need not have an emergent relativistic structure in the form of a light cone. Adopting a field-theoretic approach, we study the one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model with long-range interactions, and a fermionic model with long-range hopping and pairing terms, explore their critical and near-critical behavior, and characterize their response to local perturbations. We deduce the dynamic critical exponent, up to the two-loop order within the renormalization group theory, which we then use to characterize the emergent causal behavior. We show that beyond a critical value of the power-law exponent of the long-range couplings, the dynamics effectively becomes relativistic. Various other critical exponents describing correlations in the ground state, as well as deviations from a linear causal cone, are deduced for a wide range of the power-law exponent.