The spectral density of a quantum Ising model in transverse and longitudinal fields for a large but finite number of spins N is discussed in detail. When both fields are of the same order, the spectral densities in the bulk are well approximated by a Gaussian function, which is typical behaviour for many-body models with short-range interactions. The main part of the paper is devoted to the investigation of a different characteristic case where spectral densities have peaks related with strong degeneracies of unperturbed states in certain limits of field amplitudes. In the strict limit peaks overlap and disappear but for values of N accessible in numerical calculations they often strongly influence spectral densities as well as other quantities. A simple method is developed that permits us to find general approximation formulae for the multi-peak structure of spectral density, which is in good agreement with numerics.
The transverse field Ising model of N fully connected spins provides a mathematical accessible, yet non-trivial, system to investigate the non-thermal dynamics after a sudden quantum quench. The focus in this thesis is three-fold. First, in a 1/N expansion the dynamics of the mean magnetization within its variance is obtained analytically in the large N limit. The variance constitutes a leading order correction to the mean field limit at infinite N. While mean field theories are one of the most accessible approximations to deal with the quantum complexity, its validity in time out of equilibrium has to be checked on a case by case basis. By studying the dynamics of the variance, we see that the mean field approximation can break down at surprisingly early times scaling with the square root of N. The underlying mechanism in the fully connected Ising model is identified as a dephasing effect between nearby effective orbits. The dynamics of the magnetization variance discriminates four qualitatively different regions in the dynamical phase diagram that are indistinguishable by just looking at the mean magnetization. Second, bipartite entanglement between disjoint groups of the spins in the fully connected Ising model is studied. In the large N limit the entanglement Hamiltonian is shown to be a harmonic oscillator. A quantitative relation between the angular frequency of the oscillator and a squeezing measure of the spin state is derived. Explicit expressions for the Renyi entanglement entropies are given. In contrast to the variance, which vanishes in the thermodynamic limit, the entanglement entropy saturate to an N-independent positive value. The dynamics of the entanglement Hamiltonian and the entanglement entropies is discussed. Linear growth as a function of time is linked to the unstable fixed point and the homoclinic orbit of a pitchfork bifurcation, while logarithmic increase is explained due to a dephasing mechanism of nearby effective orbits. A generalization to other models that permit a semiclassical effective description (on a possibly higher dimensional phase space) is given. As a byproduct the connection between entangled Gaussian states and the symplectic eigenvalues of its reduced covariance is derived. An upper bound on the von Neumann entanglement entropy of any bipartite pure state is given in terms of the symplectic properties of its reduced covariance. Third, the existence of dynamical phase transitions (DPTs) in the fully connected Ising model is argued by two different approaches. DPTs are defined as non-analyticities in the time-dependence of the return probability rate function in the thermodynamic limit. Like entanglement entropy, the behavior of the return rate function is an observable-independent quantity used to characterize non-equilibrium states. A numerically based connection between the DPT and the analytic property of the infinite time averaged order parameter as a function of quench strength is discussed. The concept of Feynman history states is used to devise the notion of history entanglement. An information theoretic interpretation of the history entanglement entropy as the precision of a quantum clock follows from Holevo’s bound. The dependence of this entanglement entropy on the observation time constitutes an operator-independent characterization of the quantum dynamics in closed systems. For observation times comparable to the Heisenberg time, the history entanglement becomes sensitive to the statistics of the energy gaps, and thus distinguishes integrable and non-integrable dynamics. This is demonstrated for two examples, a random matrix ensemble, and a one-dimensional hardcore boson model with integrability breaking next nearest neighbor interaction.
The ground state of the quantum one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model in a longitudinal field is studied using a real-space renormalization-group method. The longitudinal magnetization in the ground state is calculated. Considering a real longitudinal field, this study provides an indirect investigation of the equation of state of the equivalent classical two-dimensional Ising model. Considering then the case of a purely imaginary longitudinal field, a new critical behavior is found which corresponds to the Yang-Lee edge singularity of the classical equivalent. In this last case the details of calculations and results are given, published earlier in a letter form.
We derive the moments, at $T=\ensuremath{\infty}$, of the longitudinal spin-spin correlation function of the Ising model in a transverse field. The first 20 moments are obtained for the linear chain, the first 12 moments for the fcc lattice. We use a method of Nickel [J. Phys. C 7, 1719 (1914)] to construct the relaxation function and find excellent agreement with the exact results of Capel and Perk [Physica (Utrecht) 87A, 211 (1977)] in one dimension and extremely good convergence in three dimensions. Our method of analysis provides much better convergence than methods based on truncation of the continued-fraction representation.
We present new results on the time-dependent correlation functions ${\ensuremath{\Xi}}_{n}(t)=4〈{S}_{0}^{\ensuremath{\xi}}(t){S}_{n}^{\ensuremath{\xi}}〉$, $\ensuremath{\xi}=x,y$, at zero temperature of the one-dimensional
S=21 isotropic
XY model ($h=\ensuremath{\gamma}=0$) and of the transverse Ising (TI) model at the critical magnetic field ($h=\ensuremath{\gamma}=1$). Both models are characterized by special cases of the Hamiltonian $H=\ensuremath{-}J\ensuremath{\Sigma}{l}^{}[(1+\ensuremath{\gamma}){S}_{l}^{x}{S}_{l+1}^{x}+(1\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\gamma}){S}_{l}^{y}{S}_{l+1}^{y}+h{S}_{1}^{z}]$. We have derived exact results on the long-time asymptotic expansions of the autocorrelation functions ${\ensuremath{\Xi}}_{0}(0)$ and on the singularities of their frequency-dependent Fourier transforms ${\ensuremath{\Phi}}_{0}^{\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\xi}}(\ensuremath{\omega})$. We have also determined the latter functions by high-precision numerical calculations. The functions ${\ensuremath{\Phi}}_{0}^{\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\xi}}(\ensuremath{\omega})$, $\ensuremath{\xi}=x,y$, have singularities at the infinite sequence of frequencies $\ensuremath{\omega}=m{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$,
m=0,1,2,3,…, where ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}=J$ for the
XY model and ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}=2J$ for the TI model. In the TI case, the leading singularities in ${\ensuremath{\varphi}}_{0}^{\mathrm{xx}}(\ensuremath{\omega})$ are alternately one-sided and two-sided power-law singularities, the first two of which (at $\ensuremath{\omega}=0,2J$) are divergent. The dominant singularities in the
XY case are alternate one-sided power laws and two-sided power laws with logarithmic corrections, the first two of which (at $\ensuremath{\omega}=0,J$) are divergent. The singularities at higher frequencies in both models are finite and become increasingly weaker. We point out that the nonanalyticities at $\ensuremath{\omega}\ensuremath{\ne}0$ are intrinsic features of the discrete quantum chain and have therefore not been found in the context of a continuum analysis (Luttinger model). At least the most prominent features of our new results should be observable in low-temperature dynamical experiments on quasi-one-dimensional compounds such as the
XY-like substances
Cs2Co
Cl4 and Pr
Cl3 and the
S=21 Ising-like substance CsCo
Cl3${\mathrm{\ifmmode\cdot\else\textperiodcentered\fi{}}2\mathrm{H}}_{2}$O.