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arXiv:1507.08132 · Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Inhomogeneous quenches in a free fermionic chain: Exact results

Jacopo Viti, Jean-Marie Stéphan, Jérôme Dubail, Masudul Haque

Published Aug 1, 2016• 139 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We consider the non-equilibrium physics induced by joining together two tight-binding fermionic chains to form a single chain. Before being joined, each chain is in a many-fermion ground state. The fillings (densities) in the two chains might be different. We present a number of exact results, focusing on two-point correlators and the Loschmidt echo (return probability). For the non-interacting case, we identify through an exact derivation the regime in which a semiclassical ansatz is valid. We present a number of analytical results beyond semiclassics, such as the approach to the non-equilibrium steady state and the appearance of Tracy-Widom distributions at the front of the light cone. The light cone behavior is quantified through a series expansion in time, and this description is shown to be valid for interacting systems as well. Results on the Loschmidt echo, presented for finite and zero interactions, illustrate that the physics is different from both local and global quenches.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/115/40011

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We consider the non-equilibrium physics induced by joining together two tight-binding fermionic chains to form a single chain. Before being joined, each chain is in a many-fermion ground state. The fillings (densities) in the two chains might be different. We present a number of exact results, focusing on two-point correlators and the Loschmidt echo (return probability). For the non-interacting case, we identify through an exact derivation the regime in which a semiclassical ansatz is valid. We present a number of analytical results beyond semiclassics, such as the approach to the non-equilibrium steady state and the appearance of Tracy-Widom distributions at the front of the light cone. The light cone behavior is quantified through a series expansion in time, and this description is shown to be valid for interacting systems as well. Results on the Loschmidt echo, presented for finite and zero interactions, illustrate that the physics is different from both local and global quenches.
We investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of the transverse field quantum Ising chain evolving from an inhomogeneous initial state given by joining two macroscopically different semi-infinite chains. We obtain integral expressions for all two-point correlation functions of the Jordan--Wigner Majorana fermions at any time and for any value of the transverse field. Using this result, we analytically compute the profiles of various physical observables in the space-time scaling limit and show that they can be obtained from a hydrodynamic picture based on ballistically propagating quasiparticles. Going beyond the hydrodynamic limit, we analyze the approach to the non-equilibrium steady state and find that the leading late time corrections display a lattice effect. We also study the fine structure of the propagating fronts which are found to be described by the Airy kernel and its derivatives. Near the front we observe the phenomenon of energy back-flow where the energy locally flows from the colder to the hotter region.
We study the spreading of correlations after a local quench in a nonrelativistic quantum field theory. We focus on noninteracting nonrelativistic fermions and study the time evolution after two identical systems in their ground states are suddenly joined together with a localized impurity at the junction. We find that, even if the quasiparticles of the system have unbounded dispersion, the correlations show light cone effects. We carry out a detailed study of these effects by developing an accurate asymptotic expansion of the two-point function and determining exactly the density of particles at any time after the quench. In particular, we find that the width of the light cone region is $\ensuremath{\propto}{t}^{1/2}$. The structure of correlations, however, does not show a pure light cone form: ``superluminal corrections'' are much larger than in the bounded-dispersion case. These findings can be explained by inspecting the structure of excitations generated by the initial state. We show that a similar picture also emerges in the presence of a harmonic trapping potential and when more than two systems are suddenly joined at a single point.
We address the computation of the Loschmidt echo in interacting integrable spin chains after a quantum quench. We focus on the massless regime of the XXZ spin-1/2 chain and present exact results for the dynamical free energy (Loschmidt echo per site) for a special class of integrable initial states. For the first time we are able to observe and describe points of non-analyticities using exact methods, by following the Loschmidt echo up to large real times. The dynamical free energy is computed as the leading eigenvalue of an appropriate Quantum Transfer Matrix, and the non-analyticities arise from the level crossings of this matrix. Our exact results are expressed in terms of “excited-state” thermodynamic Bethe ansatz equations, whose solutions involve non-trivial Riemann surfaces. By evaluating our formulas, we provide explicit numerical results for the quench from the Néel state, and we determine the first few non-analytic points.
Abstract. We study a particular type of local quench in a generic quantum critical one-dimensional system, using conformal field theory (CFT) techniques, and providing numerical checks of the results in free fermion systems. The system is initially cut into two subsystems A and B which are glued together at time t = 0. We study the entanglement entropy (EE) between the two parts A and B, using previous results by Calabrese and Cardy [1, 2], and further extending them. We also study in detail the (logarithmic) Loschmidt echo (LLE). For finite-size systems both quantities turn out to be (almost) periodic in the scaling limit, and exhibit striking light-cone effects. While these two quantities behave similarly immediately after the quench—namely as c/3 log t for the EE and c/4 log t for the LLE—, we observe some discrepancy once the excitations emitted by the quench bounce on the boundary and evolve within the same subsystem A (or B). The decay of the EE is then non-universal, as noticed by Eisler and Peschel [3]. In contrast, we find that the evolution of the LLE is less sensitive than the EE to non-universal details of the model, and is still accurately described by our CFT prediction. To further probe these light-cone effects, we also introduce a variant of the Loschmidt echo specifically constructed to detect the excitations emitted just after the quench.
We study a particular type of local quench in a generic quantum critical one-dimensional system, using conformal field theory (CFT) techniques, and providing numerical checks of the results in free fermion systems. The system is initially cut into two subsystems A and B which are glued together at time t = 0. We study the entropy of entanglement (EE) between the two parts A and B , using previous results obtained by Calabrese and Cardy (2004 J. Stat. Mech. P06002; 2007 J. Stat. Mech. P10004), and further extending them. We also study in detail the (logarithmic) Loschmidt echo (LLE). For finite size systems both quantities turn out to be (almost) periodic in the scaling limit, and exhibit striking light-cone effects. While these two quantities behave similarly immediately after the quench—namely as c /3log t for the EE and c /4log t for the LLE—we observe some discrepancy once the excitations emitted by the quench bounce on the boundary and evolve within the same subsystem A (or B ). The decay of the EE is then non-universal, as noticed by Eisler and Peschel (2007 J. Stat. Mech. P06005). In contrast, we find that the evolution of the LLE is less sensitive than the EE to non-universal details of the model, and is still accurately described by our CFT prediction. To further probe these light-cone effects, we also introduce a variant of the Loschmidt echo specifically constructed to detect the excitations emitted just after the quench.
We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics in the XX chain with step-like magnetic field, which maps to an inhomogeneous tight-binding chain after Jordan-Wigner transformation. We obtain exact analytic expressions for the fermionic two-point correlation function after a quantum quench from several initial product states, both homogeneous and inhomogeneous ones. This is achieved by using a combination of Fourier and Laplace transforms, which al low us to map the problem to a standard Riemann-Hilbert problem on the unit circle. For arbitrary positions and times the correlators are not expressed in terms of elementary functions. However, in the hydrodynamic limit x,y,t→∞x,y,t\to\inftyx,y,t→∞ with fixed ratios, we provide explicit formulas that depend only on the effective transmission coefficient across the origin. We benchmark our analytic predictions against exact numerical simulations and find excellent agreement in the hydrodynamic limit, apart from finite-time corrections.