Quantum dynamics of magnetic order in a chiral multiferroic chain is studied. We consider two different scenarios: ultrashort terahertz excitations or a sudden electric field quench. Performing analytical and numerical exact diagonalization calculations, we trace the pulse induced spin dynamics and extract quantities that are relevant to quantum information processing. In particular, we analyze the dynamics of the system chirality, the von Neumann entropy, and the pairwise and many-body entanglement. If the characteristic frequencies of the generated states are noncommensurate, then a partial loss of pair concurrence occurs. Increasing the system size, this effect becomes even more pronounced. Many-particle entanglement and chirality are robust and persist in the incommensurate phase. To analyze the dynamical quantum transitions for the quenched and pulsed dynamics we combined the Weierstrass factorization technique for entire functions and the Lanczos exact diagonalization method. For a small system we obtained analytical results including the rate function of the Loschmidt echo. Exact numerical calculations for a system up to 40 spins confirm phase transition. Quench-induced dynamical transitions have been extensively studied recently. Here we show that related dynamical transitions can be achieved and controlled by appropriate electric field pulses.
Quantum dynamics of magnetic order in a chiral multiferroic chain is studied. We consider two different scenarios: ultrashort terahertz excitations or a sudden electric field quench. Performing analytical and numerical exact diagonalization calculations, we trace the pulse induced spin dynamics and extract quantities that are relevant to quantum information processing. In particular, we analyze the dynamics of the system chirality, the von Neumann entropy, and the pairwise and many-body entanglement. If the characteristic frequencies of the generated states are noncommensurate, then a partial loss of pair concurrence occurs. Increasing the system size, this effect becomes even more pronounced. Many-particle entanglement and chirality are robust and persist in the incommensurate phase. To analyze the dynamical quantum transitions for the quenched and pulsed dynamics we combined the Weierstrass factorization technique for entire functions and the Lanczos exact diagonalization method. For a small system we obtained analytical results including the rate function of the Loschmidt echo. Exact numerical calculations for a system up to 40 spins confirm phase transition. Quench-induced dynamical transitions have been extensively studied recently. Here we show that related dynamical transitions can be achieved and controlled by appropriate electric field pulses.
We analytically and numerically study the Loschmidt echo and the dynamical order parameters in a spin chain with a deconfined phase transition between a dimerized state and a ferromagnetic phase. For quenches from a dimerized state to a ferromagnetic phase, we find that the model can exhibit a dynamical quantum phase transition characterized by an associating dimerized order parameter. In particular, when quenching the system from the Majumdar-Ghosh state to the ferromagnetic Ising state, we find an exact mapping into the classical Ising chain for a quench from the paramagnetic phase to the classical Ising phase by analytically calculating the Loschmidt echo and the dynamical order parameters. By contrast, for quenches from a ferromagnetic state to a dimerized state, the system relaxes very fast so that the dynamical quantum transition may exist on only a short timescale. We reveal that the dynamical quantum phase transition can occur in systems with two broken symmetry phases and the quench dynamics may be independent of equilibrium phase transitions.
We propose and explore the physics of a toy multiferroic model by coupling two distinct dipolar XXZ models in transverse fields. We determine first the rich ground-state phase diagram of the model using density matrix renormalization group techniques. Then, we explore the dynamics of the system after global and local quenches, using the time-evolving block decimation algorithm. After a global quench, the system displays decaying coupled oscillations of the electric and magnetic spins, in agreement with the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) for many-body interacting quantum systems. Notably, the spin-spin interactions lead to a sizeable quadratic shift in the oscillation frequency as the inter-chain coupling is increased. Local quenches lead to a light-cone-like propagation of excitations. In this case, the inter-chain coupling drives a transfer of energy between the chains that generates a novel fast spin-wave mode along the 'magnetic' chain at the speed of the 'electric' spin-wave. This suggests a limited control mechanism for faster information transfer in magnetic spin chains using electric fields that harnesses the electric dipoles as intermediaries.
We investigate quench dynamics in the quantum S=1/2 XXZ antiferromagnetic chain with staggered and anisotropic interactions in the flat-band limit. We consider global quenches that interchange odd- and even-bond strengths in a fully dimerized chain, yielding a postquench Hamiltonian with couplings only on even links. Due to the vanishing group velocity of excitations, the system fails to relax, providing an ideal setting to study dynamical topological quantum phase transitions. We show that the z-component of the interactions, controlled by the anisotropy Δ, acts as a relevant term that generates additional dynamical quantum phase transitions and induces rich structures in the Loschmidt echo. These transitions are symmetry-protected and robust for quenches between distinct dimerization patterns. Using a Bell-basis representation, we derive closed-form results for entanglement entropies, Loschmidt echoes for finite and infinite systems, and identify both Δ-independent and Δ-dependent critical times. Quantum simulations on IBM Quantum processors demonstrate that key observables can be reliably extracted on noisy intermediate-scale devices without error mitigation.
Quantum Ising model in one dimension is an exactly solvable example of a quantum phase transition. We investigate its behavior during a quench caused by a gradual turning off of the transverse bias field. The system is then driven at a fixed rate characterized by the quench time ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{Q}$ across the critical point from a paramagnetic to ferromagnetic phase. In agreement with Kibble-Zurek mechanism (which recognizes that evolution is approximately adiabatic far away, but becomes approximately impulse sufficiently near the critical point), quantum state of the system after the transition exhibits a characteristic correlation length $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$ proportional to the square root of the quench time ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{Q}$: $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}=\sqrt{{\ensuremath{\tau}}_{Q}}$. The inverse of this correlation length is known to determine average density of defects (e.g., kinks) after the transition. In this paper, we show that this same $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$ controls the entropy of entanglement, e.g., entropy of a block of L spins that are entangled with the rest of the system after the transition from the paramagnetic ground state induced by the quench. For large L, this entropy saturates at $\frac{1}{6}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{log}}_{2}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$, as might have been expected from the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. Close to the critical point, the entropy saturates when the block size $L\ensuremath{\approx}\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$, but---in the subsequent evolution in the ferromagnetic phase---a somewhat larger length scale $l=\sqrt{{\ensuremath{\tau}}_{Q}}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ln}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}_{Q}$ develops as a result of a dephasing process that can be regarded as a quantum analog of phase ordering, and the entropy saturates when $L\ensuremath{\approx}l$. We also study the spin-spin correlation using both analytic methods and real time simulations with the Vidal algorithm. We find that at an instant when quench is crossing the critical point, ferromagnetic correlations decay exponentially with the dynamical correlation length $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$, but (as for entropy of entanglement) in the following evolution length scale l gradually develops. The correlation function becomes oscillatory at distances less than this scale. However, both the wavelength and the correlation length of these oscillations are still determined by $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$. We also derive probability distribution for the number of kinks in a finite spin chain after the transition.
Based on time-dependent variational-principle algorithms, we investigate the dynamical critical behavior of quantum three-state Potts chains with chiral interactions. Using the Loschmidt echo, dynamical order parameter, and entanglement entropy as an indicator, we show that as the chiral interaction $\ensuremath{\theta}$ increases, the first critical time t1∗ shifts towards lower values, indicating a chirality-related dynamical phase transition. Moreover, we perform dynamical scaling for the Loschmidt echo and obtain the critical exponent $\ensuremath{\nu}$ at the nonconformal critical point. The results show that as the chiral interaction $\ensuremath{\theta}$ increases, the correlation-length exponent $\ensuremath{\nu}$ decreases, which is similar to the long-range interaction case. Finally, we give a simple physical argument to understand the above numerical results. This work provides a useful reference for further research on many-body physics out of equilibrium with chiral interaction.
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.