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arXiv:1502.07507 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Anderson’s orthogonality catastrophe in one dimension induced by a magnetic field

Hans Konrad Knörr, Peter Otte, Wolfgang Spitzer

Published Jul 24, 2015• 7 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

According to Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe, the overlap of the N -particle ground states of a free Fermi gas with and without an (electric) potential decays in the thermodynamic limit. For the finite one-dimensional system various boundary conditions are employed. Unlike the usual setup the perturbation is introduced by a magnetic (vector) potential. Although such a magnetic field can be gauged away in one spatial dimension there is a significant and interesting effect on the overlap caused by the phases. We study the leading asymptotics of the overlap of the two ground states and the two-term asymptotics of the difference of the ground-state energies. In the case of periodic boundary conditions our main result on the overlap is based upon a well-known asymptotic expansion by Fisher and Hartwig on Toeplitz determinants with a discontinuous symbol. In the case of Dirichlet boundary conditions no such result is known to us and we only provide an upper bound on the overlap, presumably of the right asymptotic order.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8113/48/32/325202

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According to Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe, the overlap of the N -particle ground states of a free Fermi gas with and without an (electric) potential decays in the thermodynamic limit. For the finite one-dimensional system various boundary conditions are employed. Unlike the usual setup the perturbation is introduced by a magnetic (vector) potential. Although such a magnetic field can be gauged away in one spatial dimension there is a significant and interesting effect on the overlap caused by the phases. We study the leading asymptotics of the overlap of the two ground states and the two-term asymptotics of the difference of the ground-state energies. In the case of periodic boundary conditions our main result on the overlap is based upon a well-known asymptotic expansion by Fisher and Hartwig on Toeplitz determinants with a discontinuous symbol. In the case of Dirichlet boundary conditions no such result is known to us and we only provide an upper bound on the overlap, presumably of the right asymptotic order.
We quantify the asymptotic vanishing of the ground-state overlap of two non-interacting Fermi gases in d -dimensional Euclidean space in the thermodynamic limit. Given two one-particle Schrödinger operators in finite-volume which differ by a compactly supported bounded potential, we prove a power-law upper bound on the ground-state overlap of the corresponding non-interacting N -Fermion systems. We interpret the decay exponent \gamma in terms of scattering theory and find \gamma = \pi^{-2}\|\mathrm {arcsin}|T_E/2|\|_{\mathrm {HS}}^2 , where T_E is the transition matrix at the Fermi energy E . This exponent reduces to the one predicted by Anderson [Phys. Rev. 164, 352–359 (1967)] for the exact asymptotics in the special case of a repulsive point-like perturbation.
It is well known that the ground states of a Fermi liquid with and without a single Kondo impurity have an overlap that decays as a power law of the system size, expressing the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe. Ground states with two different values of the Kondo couplings have, however, a finite overlap in the thermodynamic limit. This overlap, which plays an important role in quantum quenches for impurity systems, is a universal function of the ratio of the corresponding Kondo temperatures, which is not accessible using perturbation theory or the Bethe ansatz. Using a strategy based on the integrable structure of the corresponding quantum field theory, we propose an exact formula for this overlap, which we check against extensive density matrix renormalization group calculations.
We provide a fully analytical derivation of Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe for the one dimensional Fermi polaron integrable model, describing a system of NNN spin-up fermions, with fixed density n=N/Ln=N/Ln=N/L, interacting with a single spin-down fermion via an attractive contact potential. The proof combines the determinant representations of the norm of the many-body wave function and of its scalar product with the noninteracting ground state, obtained from the Bethe ansatz solution, with the special properties of Cauchy matrices. We derive the leading asymptotics of the two determinants in the thermodynamic limit and show that the quasi-particle residue ZZZ decays algebraically, Z=WN−θZ=W N^{-θ}Z=WN−θ. We confirm that the Anderson exponent θθθ is equal to 2δF2/π22δ_F^2/π^22δF2​/π2, where δFδ_FδF​ is the Bethe-ansatz phase shift at the Fermi edge. We also derive the asymptotic behavior of the prefactor WWW at strong coupling and compare it against exact numerics.
The goal of this thesis is a mathematical understanding of a phenomenon called Anderson's Orthogonality in the physics literature. Given two non-interacting fermionic systems which differ by an exterior short-range scattering potential, the scalar product of the corresponding ground states is predicted to decay algebraically in the thermodynamic limit. This decay is referred to as Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe in the physics literature and goes back to P.W.Anderson [Phys. Rev. Lett. 18:1049--1051] and is used to explain anomalies in the X-ray absorption spectrum of metals. We call this scalar product SNLS_N^LSNL​, where NNN refers to the particle number and LLL to the diameter of the considered fermionic system. This decay was proven in the works [Commun. Math. Phys. 329:979--998] and [arXiv:1407.2512] for rather general pairs of Schrödinger operators in arbitrary dimension d∈Nd\in\Nd∈N, i.e. ∣SNL∣2≤L−γ|S_N^L|^2\le L^{-\gamma}∣SNL​∣2≤L−γ in the thermodynamic limit N/Ld→ρ>0N/L^d\to \rho>0N/Ld→ρ>0 approaching a positive particle density. In the general case, the biggest found decay exponent is given by $\gamma=\frac 1 {\pi^2} \norm{\arcsin|T/2|}_{\text{HS}}$, where T refers to the scattering T-matrix. In this thesis, we prove such upper bounds in more general situations than considered in both [Commun. Math. Phys. 329:979--998] and [arXiv:1407.2512]. Furthermore, we provide the first rigorous proof of the exact asymptotics Anderson predicted. We prove that in the 333-dimensional toy model of a Dirac-δ\deltaδ perturbation that the exact decay exponent is given by ζ:=δ2/π2\zeta:= \delta^2/ \pi^2ζ:=δ2/π2. Here, δ\deltaδ refers to the s-wave scattering phase shift. In particular, this result shows that the previously found decay exponent γ\gammaγ does not provide the correct asymptotics of §NL\S_N^L§NL​ in general. Since the decay exponent is expressed in terms of scattering theory, these bounds depend on the existence of absolutely continuous spectrum of the underlying Schrödinger operators. We are able to deduce a different behavior in the contrary situation of Anderson localization. We prove the non-vanishing of the expectation value of the non-interacting many-body scalar product in the thermodynamic limit. Apart from the behavior of the scalar product of the non-interacting ground states, we also study the asymptotics of the difference of the ground-state energies. We show that this difference converges in the thermodynamic limit to the integral of the spectral-shift function up to the Fermi energy. Furthermore, we quantify the error for models on the half-axis and show that higher order error terms depend on the particular thermodynamic limit chosen.
We prove a simple theorem on the overlap of the wavefunctions of a manybody system with and without a single impurity and show how, and under which conditions, this leads to the ``Orthogonality Catastrophe'' (OC) described by Anderson. A compact new derivation of the known result for the OC exponent in a free electron gas, $α=2 \sum_l(2l+1) (δ_l(ε_f)/π)^2 $ %α=2∑l[2l+1](δl(εf)/π)2α= 2\sum_l [2l+1] (δ_l(ε_f)/π)^2α=2∑l​[2l+1](δl​(εf​)/π)2, is given. We also introduce a simple way of calculating core level photoemission (XPS) lineshapes from the finite size scaling of groundstate energies, reproducing and extending results previously derived using boundary conformal field theory. Different conditions under which the OC fails are discussed, and simple physical predictions for XPS lineshapes made in each case.
Orthogonality catastrophe in fermionic systems is well known: in the thermodynamic limit, the overlap between the ground state wavefunctions with and without a single local scattering potential approaches zero algebraically as a function of the particle number NNN. Here we examine the analogous problem for bosonic systems. In the homogeneous case, we find that ideal bosons display an orthogonality stronger than algebraic: the wavefunction overlap behaves as exp[−λN1/3]{\rm exp}[-λN^{1/3}]exp[−λN1/3] in three dimensions and as exp[−λN/ln⁡2N]{\rm exp}[-λN/\ln ^2 N]exp[−λN/ln2N] in two dimensions. With interactions, the overlap becomes finite but is still (stretched-)exponentially small for weak interactions. We also consider the cases with a harmonic trap, reaching similar (though not identical) conclusions. Finally, we comment on the implications of our results for spectroscopic experiments and for (de)coherence phenomena.