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arXiv:1710.08178 · Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment

Quantum return probability of a system of N non-interacting lattice fermions

P. L. Krapivsky, J. M. Luck, Kirone Mallick

Published Feb 1, 2018• 19 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract We consider N non-interacting fermions performing continuous-time quantum walks on a one-dimensional lattice. The system is launched from a most compact configuration where the fermions occupy neighboring sites. We calculate exactly the quantum return probability (sometimes referred to as the Loschmidt echo) of observing the very same compact state at a later time t . Remarkably, this probability depends on the parity of the fermion number—it decays as a power of time for even N , while for odd N it exhibits periodic oscillations modulated by a decaying power law. The exponent also slightly depends on the parity of N , and is roughly twice smaller than what it would be in the continuum limit. We also consider the same problem, and obtain similar results, in the presence of an impenetrable wall at the origin constraining the particles to remain on the positive half-line. We derive closed-form expressions for the amplitudes of the power-law decay of the return probability in all cases. The key point in the derivation is the use of Mehta integrals, which are limiting cases of the Selberg integral.

DOI
10.1088/1742-5468/aaa79a

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Abstract We consider N non-interacting fermions performing continuous-time quantum walks on a one-dimensional lattice. The system is launched from a most compact configuration where the fermions occupy neighboring sites. We calculate exactly the quantum return probability (sometimes referred to as the Loschmidt echo) of observing the very same compact state at a later time t . Remarkably, this probability depends on the parity of the fermion number—it decays as a power of time for even N , while for odd N it exhibits periodic oscillations modulated by a decaying power law. The exponent also slightly depends on the parity of N , and is roughly twice smaller than what it would be in the continuum limit. We also consider the same problem, and obtain similar results, in the presence of an impenetrable wall at the origin constraining the particles to remain on the positive half-line. We derive closed-form expressions for the amplitudes of the power-law decay of the return probability in all cases. The key point in the derivation is the use of Mehta integrals, which are limiting cases of the Selberg integral.
Abstract We consider N non-interacting fermions prepared in the ground state of a 1D confining potential and submitted to an instantaneous quench consisting in releasing the trapping potential. We show that the quantum return probability of finding the fermions in their initial state at a later time falls off as a power law in the long-time regime, with a universal exponent depending only on N and on whether the free fermions expand over the full line or over a half-line. In both geometries, the amplitudes of this power-law decay are expressed in terms of finite determinants of moments of the one-body bound-state wavefunctions in the potential. These amplitudes are worked out explicitly for the harmonic and square-well potentials. At large fermion numbers they obey scaling laws involving the Fermi energy of the initial state. The use of the Selberg–Mehta integrals stemming from random matrix theory has been instrumental in the derivation of these results.
A return probability of random walks is one of the interesting subjects. As it is well known, the return probability strongly depends on the structure of the space where the random walker moves. On the other hand, the return probability of quantum walks, which are quantum models corresponding to random walks, has also been investigated to some extend lately. In this paper, we take care of a discrete-time three-state quantum walk on a hexagonal lattice from the view point of mathematics. The mathematical result shows a limit of the return probability when the walker starts off at the origin. The result of the limit tells us about a possibility of localization at the position and a dependence of localization on the initial state.
We study the Loschmidt echo in a system of N non-interacting spinless lattice fermions released from a double-domain-wall initial state. In the large-N limit, the return probability is characterized by a large-deviation rate function known as the dynamical free energy. The Loschmidt echo is dominated by a complex instanton configuration, and the dynamical free energy develops a logarithmic singularity at the dynamical quantum phase transition. We obtain analytical results in the short-time and long-time regimes and support them with numerical computations. We show that the transition can be understood as a topological change of the dominant instanton configuration, analogous to the emergence of a cut in random matrix theory. We further show that post-selection can drive the system through two successive DQPTs, associated with successive topological changes of the dominant instanton configuration in complex time.
The Born-Markov approximation is widely used to study the dynamics of open quantum systems coupled to external baths. Using Keldysh formalism, we show that the dynamics of a system of bosons (fermions) linearly coupled to a noninteracting bosonic (fermionic) bath falls outside this paradigm if the bath spectral function has nonanalyticities as a function of frequency. In this case, we show that the dissipative and noise kernels governing the dynamics have distinct power-law tails. The Green's functions show a short-time ``quasi''-Markovian exponential decay before crossing over to a power-law tail governed by the nonanalyticity of the spectral function. We study a system of bosons (fermions) hopping on a one-dimensional lattice, where each site is coupled linearly to an independent bath of noninteracting bosons (fermions). We obtain exact expressions for the Green's functions of this system, which show power-law decay $\ensuremath{\sim}|t\ensuremath{-}{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}{|}^{\ensuremath{-}3/2}$. We use these to calculate the density and current profile, as well as unequal-time current-current correlators. While the density and current profiles show interesting quantitative deviations from Markovian results, the current-current correlators show qualitatively distinct long-time power-law tails $|t\ensuremath{-}{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}{|}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ characteristic of non-Markovian dynamics. We show that the power-law decays survive in the presence of interparticle interaction in the system, but the crossover time scale is shifted to larger values with increasing interaction strength.
We consider general quantum random walks in a d -dimensional half-space. We first obtain a path integral formula for general quantum random walks in a d -dimensional space. Our path integral formula is valid for general quantum random walks on Cayley graphs as well. Then the path integral formula is applied to obtain the scaling limit of the exit distribution, the expectation of exit time and the asymptotic behaviour of the exit probabilities, for general quantum random walks in a half-space under some conditions on amplitude functions. The conditions are shown to be satisfied by both the Hadamard and Grover quantum random walks in two-dimensional half-spaces. For the two-dimensional case, we show that the critical exponent for the scaling limit of the hitting distribution is 1 as the lattice spacing tends to zero, i.e. the natural magnitude of the hitting position is of order O (1) if the lattice spacing is set to be 1/ n . We also show that the rate of convergence of the total hitting probability has lower bound n −2 and upper bound n −2+ for any > 0. For a quantum random walk with a fixed starting point, we show that the probability of hitting times at the hyperplane decays faster than that of the classical random walk. In both one and two dimensions, given the event of a hit, the conditional expectation of hitting times is finite, in contrast to being infinite for the classical case. In the one-dimensional case, we also obtain an exact order of the probability distribution of the hitting time at 0.
We study SU(N)\mathrm{SU}(N)SU(N) fermions in the limit of infinite on-site repulsion between all species. We focus on states in which every pair of consecutive fermions carries a different spin flavor. Since the particle order cannot be changed (because of the infinite on-site repulsion) and contiguous fermions have a different spin flavor, we refer to the corresponding constrained model as the model of distinguishable quantum particles. We introduce an exact numerical method to calculate equilibrium one-body correlations of distinguishable quantum particles based on a mapping onto noninteracting spinless fermions. In contrast to most many-body systems in one dimension, which usually exhibit either power-law or exponential decay of off-diagonal one-body correlations with distance, distinguishable quantum particles exhibit a Gaussian decay of one-body correlations in the ground state, while finite-temperature correlations are well described by stretched exponential decay.