The ability of many-body systems to spread out information has fundamental impact on quantum information, thermodynamics, and transport dynamics. Long-range interactions are particularly appealing as they pave the way to nonballistic dynamics, and recent observations challenge existing bounds. Here, the authors develop a general theory based on quasiparticles that unifies short-range and long-range systems. They show that, in general, two signals coexist and carry complementary information about the many-body spectrum. One of the signals is subballistic while the other may be superballistic. This result has fundamental implications on the interpretation of experiments and offers tools to probe many-body systems.
The ability of many-body systems to spread out information has fundamental impact on quantum information, thermodynamics, and transport dynamics. Long-range interactions are particularly appealing as they pave the way to nonballistic dynamics, and recent observations challenge existing bounds. Here, the authors develop a general theory based on quasiparticles that unifies short-range and long-range systems. They show that, in general, two signals coexist and carry complementary information about the many-body spectrum. One of the signals is subballistic while the other may be superballistic. This result has fundamental implications on the interpretation of experiments and offers tools to probe many-body systems.
The nonequilibrium response of a quantum many-body system defines its fundamental transport properties and how initially localized quantum information spreads. However, for long-range-interacting quantum systems little is known. We address this issue by analyzing a local quantum quench in the long-range Ising model in a transverse field, where interactions decay as a variable power law with distance ∝r(-α), α>0. Using complementary numerical and analytical techniques, we identify three dynamical regimes: short-range-like with an emerging light cone for α>2, weakly long range for 1<α<2 without a clear light cone but with a finite propagation speed of almost all excitations, and fully nonlocal for α<1 with instantaneous transmission of correlations. This last regime breaks generalized Lieb-Robinson bounds and thus locality. Numerical calculation of the entanglement spectrum demonstrates that the usual picture of propagating quasiparticles remains valid, allowing an intuitive interpretation of our findings via divergences of quasiparticle velocities. Our results may be tested in state-of-the-art trapped-ion experiments.
In this thesis we present our results on the propagation of correlations in long-range interacting quantum systems. The dynamics of local observables in these systems cannot be described with the standard methods used in equilibrium statistical physics and completely new methods have to be developed. Several bounds on the time evolution of correlations have been derived for these systems. However the propagation found in experimental and numerical results is completely different and several regimes are present depending on the long-range character of the interactions. Here we present analytical expressions to describe the time evolution of generic observables in systems where the Hamiltonian takes a quadratic form with long- and short-range interactions. These expressions describe the spreading of local observables as the spreading of the fundamental excitations of the system. We apply these expressions to a spin model finding three different propagation regimes. They can be described qualitatively et quantitatively by the divergences in the energy spectrum. The most important result is that the propagation is at most ballistic, but it can be also significantly slower, where the general bounds predict a propagation faster than ballistic. This points out that the bounds are not able to describe properly the propagation, but a more specific approach is needed. We then move to a system of lattice bosons interacting via long-range interactions. In this case we study two different observables finding completely different results for the same interactions: the spreading of two-body correlations is always ballistic while the one of the one-body correlations ranges from faster-than-ballistic to ballistic. Using our general analytic expressions we find that different parts of the spectrum contribute differently to different observables determining the previous differences. This points out that an observable-dependent notion of locality, missing in the general bounds, have to be developed to correctly describe the time evolution.
We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics induced by quantum quenches in quadratic Hamiltonians featuring both short- and long-range interactions. The spreading of correlations in the presence of algebraic decaying interactions, 1/ R α , is studied for lattice Bose models in arbitrary dimension D . These models are exactly solvable and provide useful insight in the universal description of more complex systems as well as comparisons to the known universal upper bounds for the spreading of correlations. Using analytical calculations of the dominant terms and full numerical integration of all quasi-particle contributions, we identify three distinct dynamical regimes. For strong decay of interactions, , we find a causal regime, qualitatively similar to what previously found for short-range interactions. This regime is characterized by ballistic (linear cone) spreading of the correlations with a cone velocity equal to twice the maximum group velocity of the quasi-particles. For weak decay of interactions, α < D , we find instantaneous activation of correlations at arbitrary distance. This signals the breaking of causality, which can be associated with the divergence of the quasi-particle energy spectrum. Finite-size scaling of the activation time precisely confirms this interpretation. For intermediate decay of interactions, , we find a sub-ballistic, algebraic (bent cone) spreading and determine the corresponding exponent as a function of α . These outcomes generalize existing results for one-dimensional systems to arbitrary dimension. We precisely relate the three regimes to the first- and second-order divergences of the quasi-particle energy spectrum for any dimension. The long-range transverse Ising model in dimensions D = 1, 2, and 3 in the (quadratic) spin-wave approximation is more specifically studied and we also discuss the shape of the correlation front in dimension higher than one. Our results apply to several condensed-matter systems as well as atomic, molecular, and optical systems, and pave the way to the observation of causality and its breaking in diverse experimental realization.
Understanding the dynamics of many-body systems is crucial for understanding, e.g., thermalization or transmission of information. Nevertheless, little is known in the case of quantum systems with long-range interactions. Here, we analyze the long-range Ising model in a transverse field, where interactions decay as a power-law with distance ∝r−α, α>0. Using complementary numerical and analytical techniques, we identify three dynamical regimes: short-range-like with an emerging light cone for α>2; weakly long-range for 1<α<2 without a clear light cone but with a finite propagation speed of excitations; and fully non-local for α<1 with instantaneous transmission of correlations. This last regime breaks generalized Lieb--Robinson bounds. Numerical calculation of the entanglement spectrum demonstrates that the usual picture of propagating quasi-particles remains valid for long-range interactions. This allows an intuitive interpretation in terms of qualitative changes to the spin-wave dispersion, leading to diverging quasi-particle velocities in the long-range regime. Our results may be tested in state-of-the-art trapped-ion experiments.
We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics induced by quantum quenches in quadratic Hamiltonians featuring both short- and long-range interactions. The spreading of correlations in the presence of algebraic decaying interactions, 1/R α , is studied for lattice Bose models in arbitrary dimension D. These models are exactly solvable and provide useful insight in the universal description of more complex systems as well as comparisons to the known universal upper bounds for the spreading of correlations. Using analytical calculations of the dominant terms and full numerical integration of all quasi-particle contributions, we identify three distinct dynamical regimes. For strong decay of interactions, α>D+1, we find a causal regime, qualitatively similar to what previously found for short-range interactions. This regime is characterized by ballistic (linear cone) spreading of the correlations with a cone velocity equal to twice the maximum group velocity of the quasi-particles. For weak decay of interactions, α < D, we find instantaneous activation of correlations at arbitrary distance. This signals the breaking of causality, which can be associated with the divergence of the quasi-particle energy spectrum. Finite-size scaling of the activation time precisely confirms this interpretation. For intermediate decay of interactions, D<α<D+1, we find a sub-ballistic, algebraic (bent cone) spreading and determine the corresponding exponent as a function of α. These outcomes generalize existing results for one-dimensional systems to arbitrary dimension. We precisely relate the three regimes to the first- and second-order divergences of the quasi-particle energy spectrum for any dimension. The long-range transverse Ising model in dimensions D = 1, 2, and 3 in the (quadratic) spin-wave approximation is more specifically studied and we also discuss the shape of the correlation front in dimension higher than one. Our results apply to several condensed-matter systems as well as atomic, molecular, and optical systems, and pave the way to the observation of causality and its breaking in diverse experimental realization.
In this thesis, we have investigated the spreading of quantum correlations in isolated lattice models with short- or long-range interactions driven far from equilibrium via sudden global quenches. A general theoretical approach relying on a quasiparticle theory is presented. The latter has permitted to unveil a generic expression for the equal-time connected correlation functions valid both for short-range and long-range interacting particle and spin lattice models on a hypercubic lattice. Relying on stationary phase arguments, we have shown that its causality cone displays a universal twofold structure consisting of a correlation edge and a series of local extrema defining the outer and inner structure of the space-time correlations. For short-range interactions, the motion of each structure is ballistic and the associated spreading velocities are related to the group and phase velocities of the quasiparticle dispersion relation of the post-quench Hamiltonian. For long-range interactions of the form 1/∣R∣α, the correlation spreading is substantially different due to a possible divergence of group velocity when tuning the power-law exponent α. For a divergent group velocity, i.e. the quasi-local regime, we have presented evidence of a universal algebraic structure for the causality cone. While, the correlation edge motion has been found to be always slower than ballistic, the local extrema propagate faster than ballistically and ballistically for gapless and gapped quantum systems respectively. For the local regime implying a well-defined group velocity, we have recovered similar scaling laws and spreading velocities than the short-range case for the causality cone of correlations.