Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1408.1950

Conservation laws for a class of generic Hamiltonians

Maurizio Fagotti

Published Aug 8, 2014• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Within a strong coupling expansion, we construct local quasi-conserved operators for a class of Hamiltonians that includes both integrable and non-integrable models. We explicitly show that at the lowest orders of perturbation theory the structure of the operators is independent of the system details. Higher order contributions are investigated numerically by means of an ab initio method for computing the time evolution of local operators in the Heisenberg picture. The numerical analysis suggests that the quasi-conserved operators could be approximations of a quasi-local conservation law, even if the model is non-integrable.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1408.1950

Related papers

Local conservation laws in quantum integrable systems

Michael Stuart Hawkins

One of the phenomena associated with quantum integrable systems is the possibility of persistent currents, i.e. currents which do not decay away entirely, but have some portion that continues to flow undiminished and indefinitely. These residual currents are shown to be the conserved part of the current operator, and calculable from the conservation laws of the system. In a particular system, previous attempts to calculate a known residual current from the conservation laws have failed. A numerical investigation is undertaken, and this disparity with the formal results is resolved by the inclusion of a previously overlooked conservation law. An important corollary to these results is that requiring the mutual commutativity of the conservation laws of a quantum integrable system, previously assumed by analogy with the classical case, is an unnecessary and potentially disastrous restriction. Methods of generating the local conservation laws of a quantum integrable system are investigated, and the current method of using a Boost operator is shown to be subtly flawed. The method is discovered to implicitly require additional knowledge in the form of Hamiltonian identities in order to avoid otherwise unphysical terms. A new method is proposed based on the idea that the logarithm of the Transfer matrix of a system generates these local conservation laws. The method is applicable to a wide class of systems whose Lax operator obeys a certain condition, and the majority of the work required to generate the local conservation laws is entirely general and thus only needs to be done once. This new method is then applied to two quite different spin-chain Hamiltonians, the XXZ and Hubbard models, and shown to successfully generate all of the known local conservation laws of these models and some new ones.

•Jul 13, 2009•2 citations

Dynamical Simulation of Integrable and Nonintegrable Models in the Heisenberg Picture

Dominik Muth, Razmik G. Unanyan, Michael Fleischhauer

The numerical simulation of quantum many-body dynamics is typically limited by the linear growth of entanglement with time. Recently numerical studies have shown that for 1D Bethe-integrable models the simulation of local operators in the Heisenberg picture can be efficient. Using the spin-1/2 XX chain as generic example of an integrable model that can be mapped to free fermions, we provide a simple explanation for this. We show furthermore that the same reduction of complexity applies to operators that have a high-temperature autocorrelation function which decays slower than exponential, i.e., with a power law. Thus efficient simulability may already be implied by a single conservation law as we will illustrate numerically for the spin-1 XXZ model.

arXiv:1009.4646•Physical Review Letters•Feb 14, 2011•50 citations

Pre-relaxation in weakly interacting models

Bruno Bertini, Maurizio Fagotti

We consider time evolution in models close to integrable points with hidden symmetries that generate infinitely many local conservation laws that do not commute with one another. The system is expected to (locally) relax to a thermal ensemble if integrability is broken, or to a so-called generalised Gibbs ensemble if unbroken. In some circumstances expectation values exhibit quasi-stationary behaviour long before their typical relaxation time. For integrability-breaking perturbations, these are also called pre-thermalisation plateaux, and emerge e.g. in the strong coupling limit of the Bose–Hubbard model. As a result of the hidden symmetries, quasi-stationarity appears also in integrable models, for example in the Ising limit of the XXZ model. We investigate a weak coupling limit, identify a time window in which the effects of the perturbations become significant and solve the time evolution through a mean-field mapping. As an explicit example we study the XYZ spin- chain with additional perturbations that break integrability. One of the most intriguing results of the analysis is the appearance of persistent oscillatory behaviour. To unravel its origin, we study in detail a toy model: the transverse-field Ising chain with an additional nonlocal interaction proportional to the square of the transverse spin per unit length (2013 Phys. Rev. Lett . 111 197203). Despite being nonlocal, this belongs to a class of models that emerge as intermediate steps of the mean-field mapping and shares many dynamical properties with the weakly interacting models under consideration.

arXiv:1501.07260•Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment•Jul 9, 2015•75 citations

Quasi-conserved quantities in the perturbed XXX spin chain

Savvas Malikis, Denis V. Kurlov, Vladimir Gritsev

We consider the isotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg spin chain weakly perturbed by a local translationally- and SU(2)-invariant perturbation. Starting from the local integrals of motion of the unperturbed model, we modify them in order to obtain quasi-conserved integrals of motion (charges) for the perturbed model. Such quasi-conserved quantities are believed to be responsible for the existence of the prethermalization phase at intermediate timescales. We find that for a sufficiently local perturbation only the first few integrals of motion can be promoted to the quasi-conserved charges, whereas higher-order integrals of motion do not survive.

arXiv:2007.01715•Jul 3, 2020•5 citations

Long-time asymptotics and conservation laws in integrable systems

Hawkins, M. S., Long, M. W., Zotos, X.

One dimensional systems sometimes show pathologically slow decay of currents. This robustness can be traced to the fact that an integrable model is nearby in parameter space. In integrable models some part of the current can be conserved, explaining this slow decay. Unfortunately, although this conservation law is formally anticipated, in practice it has been difficult to find in concrete cases, such as the Heisenberg model. We investigate this issue both analytically and numerically and find that the appropriate conservation law can be a non-analytic combination of the known local conservation laws and hence is invisible to elementary assumptions.

arXiv:0812.3096•Dec 16, 2008•1 citation

Integrability from a single conservation law in quantum spin chains

Akihiro Hokkyo

We prove that, for translationally invariant quantum spin chains with finite-range interactions, the existence of a specific conservation law implies the presence of infinitely many local conserved quantities, i.e., integrability. This shows that the standard hierarchy of local conserved quantities arising for nearest-neighbor Hamiltonians obtained via the canonical Yang-Baxter construction is already encoded in the lowest nontrivial conservation law, known as the Reshetikhin condition. Combined with recent rigorous results on nonintegrability, our theorem strongly restricts the possibility of partially integrable systems that admit only a finite but large number of local conserved quantities. Our work establishes a rigorous foundation for the systematic identification of new integrable models and deepens the algebraic understanding of conservation-law structures in quantum spin chains.

arXiv:2508.20713•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Jun 8, 2026•2 citations
Within a strong coupling expansion, we construct local quasi-conserved operators for a class of Hamiltonians that includes both integrable and non-integrable models. We explicitly show that at the lowest orders of perturbation theory the structure of the operators is independent of the system details. Higher order contributions are investigated numerically by means of an ab initio method for computing the time evolution of local operators in the Heisenberg picture. The numerical analysis suggests that the quasi-conserved operators could be approximations of a quasi-local conservation law, even if the model is non-integrable.
One of the phenomena associated with quantum integrable systems is the possibility of persistent currents, i.e. currents which do not decay away entirely, but have some portion that continues to flow undiminished and indefinitely. These residual currents are shown to be the conserved part of the current operator, and calculable from the conservation laws of the system. In a particular system, previous attempts to calculate a known residual current from the conservation laws have failed. A numerical investigation is undertaken, and this disparity with the formal results is resolved by the inclusion of a previously overlooked conservation law. An important corollary to these results is that requiring the mutual commutativity of the conservation laws of a quantum integrable system, previously assumed by analogy with the classical case, is an unnecessary and potentially disastrous restriction. Methods of generating the local conservation laws of a quantum integrable system are investigated, and the current method of using a Boost operator is shown to be subtly flawed. The method is discovered to implicitly require additional knowledge in the form of Hamiltonian identities in order to avoid otherwise unphysical terms. A new method is proposed based on the idea that the logarithm of the Transfer matrix of a system generates these local conservation laws. The method is applicable to a wide class of systems whose Lax operator obeys a certain condition, and the majority of the work required to generate the local conservation laws is entirely general and thus only needs to be done once. This new method is then applied to two quite different spin-chain Hamiltonians, the XXZ and Hubbard models, and shown to successfully generate all of the known local conservation laws of these models and some new ones.
The numerical simulation of quantum many-body dynamics is typically limited by the linear growth of entanglement with time. Recently numerical studies have shown that for 1D Bethe-integrable models the simulation of local operators in the Heisenberg picture can be efficient. Using the spin-1/2 XX chain as generic example of an integrable model that can be mapped to free fermions, we provide a simple explanation for this. We show furthermore that the same reduction of complexity applies to operators that have a high-temperature autocorrelation function which decays slower than exponential, i.e., with a power law. Thus efficient simulability may already be implied by a single conservation law as we will illustrate numerically for the spin-1 XXZ model.
We consider time evolution in models close to integrable points with hidden symmetries that generate infinitely many local conservation laws that do not commute with one another. The system is expected to (locally) relax to a thermal ensemble if integrability is broken, or to a so-called generalised Gibbs ensemble if unbroken. In some circumstances expectation values exhibit quasi-stationary behaviour long before their typical relaxation time. For integrability-breaking perturbations, these are also called pre-thermalisation plateaux, and emerge e.g. in the strong coupling limit of the Bose–Hubbard model. As a result of the hidden symmetries, quasi-stationarity appears also in integrable models, for example in the Ising limit of the XXZ model. We investigate a weak coupling limit, identify a time window in which the effects of the perturbations become significant and solve the time evolution through a mean-field mapping. As an explicit example we study the XYZ spin- chain with additional perturbations that break integrability. One of the most intriguing results of the analysis is the appearance of persistent oscillatory behaviour. To unravel its origin, we study in detail a toy model: the transverse-field Ising chain with an additional nonlocal interaction proportional to the square of the transverse spin per unit length (2013 Phys. Rev. Lett . 111 197203). Despite being nonlocal, this belongs to a class of models that emerge as intermediate steps of the mean-field mapping and shares many dynamical properties with the weakly interacting models under consideration.
We consider the isotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg spin chain weakly perturbed by a local translationally- and SU(2)-invariant perturbation. Starting from the local integrals of motion of the unperturbed model, we modify them in order to obtain quasi-conserved integrals of motion (charges) for the perturbed model. Such quasi-conserved quantities are believed to be responsible for the existence of the prethermalization phase at intermediate timescales. We find that for a sufficiently local perturbation only the first few integrals of motion can be promoted to the quasi-conserved charges, whereas higher-order integrals of motion do not survive.
One dimensional systems sometimes show pathologically slow decay of currents. This robustness can be traced to the fact that an integrable model is nearby in parameter space. In integrable models some part of the current can be conserved, explaining this slow decay. Unfortunately, although this conservation law is formally anticipated, in practice it has been difficult to find in concrete cases, such as the Heisenberg model. We investigate this issue both analytically and numerically and find that the appropriate conservation law can be a non-analytic combination of the known local conservation laws and hence is invisible to elementary assumptions.
We prove that, for translationally invariant quantum spin chains with finite-range interactions, the existence of a specific conservation law implies the presence of infinitely many local conserved quantities, i.e., integrability. This shows that the standard hierarchy of local conserved quantities arising for nearest-neighbor Hamiltonians obtained via the canonical Yang-Baxter construction is already encoded in the lowest nontrivial conservation law, known as the Reshetikhin condition. Combined with recent rigorous results on nonintegrability, our theorem strongly restricts the possibility of partially integrable systems that admit only a finite but large number of local conserved quantities. Our work establishes a rigorous foundation for the systematic identification of new integrable models and deepens the algebraic understanding of conservation-law structures in quantum spin chains.