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arXiv:1812.01920 · Physical Review A

Probing an excited-state quantum phase transition in a quantum many-body system via an out-of-time-order correlator

Qian Wang, Francisco Pérez-Bernal

Published Dec 10, 2019• 63 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) play an increasingly important role in different fields of physics and in particular they provide a way of quantifying information scrambling in quantum many-body systems. We verify that an OTOC can be used to probe an excited-state quantum phase transition (ESQPT) in a quantum many-body system. We examine the dynamical properties of an OTOC in the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, which undergoes an ESQPT, using the exact diagonalization method. We show that the long-time evolution of the proposed OTOC is remarkably different in the different phases of the ESQPT. In consequence, we put the long-time averaged value of the OTOC forward as a possible ESQPT order parameter. Our results highlight the connections between OTOCs and ESQPTs, opening the possibility of using OTOCs for accessing experimentally ESQPTs in quantum many-body systems.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.100.062113

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Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) play an increasingly important role in different fields of physics and in particular they provide a way of quantifying information scrambling in quantum many-body systems. We verify that an OTOC can be used to probe an excited-state quantum phase transition (ESQPT) in a quantum many-body system. We examine the dynamical properties of an OTOC in the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, which undergoes an ESQPT, using the exact diagonalization method. We show that the long-time evolution of the proposed OTOC is remarkably different in the different phases of the ESQPT. In consequence, we put the long-time averaged value of the OTOC forward as a possible ESQPT order parameter. Our results highlight the connections between OTOCs and ESQPTs, opening the possibility of using OTOCs for accessing experimentally ESQPTs in quantum many-body systems.
Out-of-Time-Order Correlator (OTOC) provides a way of quantifying information scrambling in quantum many-body systems and receives increasing attention from different fields. We extend the application of the OTOC to probe the excited-state quantum phase transitions (ESQPT) in spinor Bose–Einstein condensate in an external magnetic field. Using the quantum approach, mean-field theory, and numerical simulations, we have obtained the phase transition points and dynamical properties around them, and have demonstrated that these features can be detected by the OTOC. Our further investigations reveal that the detection efficiency is guaranteed under different magnetization conditions. Our results provide theoretical suggestions for using the OTOCs for experimentally accessing ESQPT in spinor quantum gases and other quantum many-body systems.
The out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) is central to the understanding of information scrambling in quantum many-body systems. In this work, we show that the OTOC in a quantum many-body system close to its critical point obeys dynamical scaling laws which are specified by a few universal critical exponents of the quantum critical point. Such scaling laws of the OTOC imply a universal form for the butterfly velocity of a chaotic system in the quantum critical region and allow one to locate the quantum critical point and extract all universal critical exponents of the quantum phase transitions. We numerically confirm the universality of the butterfly velocity in a chaotic model, namely, the transverse axial next-nearest-neighbor Ising model, and show the feasibility of extracting the critical properties of quantum phase transitions from OTOC using the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model.
Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) progressively play an important role in different fields of physics, particularly in the nonequilibrium quantum many-body systems. In this paper, we show that OTOCs can be used to probe the Floquet dynamical quantum phase transitions (FDQPTs). We investigate the OTOCs of two exactly solvable Floquet spin models, namely, Floquet XY chain and synchronized Floquet XY model. We show that the border of driving frequency range, over which the Floquet XY model shows FDQPT, is signaled by the global minimum of the infinite-temperature time averaged OTOC. Moreover, our results manifest that OTOCs decay algebraically in the long time, for which the decay exponent in the FDQPT region is different from that in the region where the system does not show FDQPTs. In addition, for the synchronized Floquet XY model, which reveals FDQPT at any driving frequency depending on the initial infinite or finite temperature, the imaginary part of the OTOCs becomes zero whenever the system shows FDQPT.
Abstract We calculate the out-of-time-ordered correlation function (OTOC) of a single impurity qubit coupled to a fully connected many-particle system, such as a bosonic Josephson junction, or spins with long-range interactions. In these systems, the qubit OTOC can be used to detect both ground state and excited state quantum phase transitions (QPTs), making it a robust order parameter that is considerably more sensitive than the standard one-body correlation function. Finite size scaling exponents for an N body system can also be accurately extracted from the long-time OTOC dynamics, however, for short times there is a discrepancy due to the fact that the qubit has not had enough time to couple to the larger system. Our results show that the OTOC of even the smallest probe is enough to diagnose a QPT in fully connected models but, like a continuous measurement, can still cause a backaction effect which leads to weakly chaotic dynamics and gradual information scrambling.
Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) serve as a proxy for quantum information scrambling, which refers to the process where information stored locally disperses across the many-body degrees of freedom in a quantum system, rendering it inaccessible to local probes. Most experimental implementations of OTOCs to probe information scrambling rely on indirect measurements based on global observables, using techniques such as Loschmidt echoes andmultiple quantum coherences, via time-reversal evolutions. In this article, we establish a direct connection between OTOCs with global and local observables in the context of NMR experiments, where the observable is the total magnetization of the system. We conduct a numerical analysis to quantify the differences in the evolution of both magnitudes, evaluating the excitation dynamics in spin ring systems with 8 to 16 spins, using a many-body Hamiltonian and long-range interactions. Our analysis decomposes the global echo into a sum of local echoes and cross-contributions, leading to local and global OTOCs. The results indicate that, after an initial transient period, local OTOCs determine the global ones. We observe that the difference between the average of local OTOCs and the global one, as well as their fluctuations, becomes negligible as the system size increases. Thus, for large homogeneous systems, global and local OTOCs become equivalent. This behavior aligns with that observed in highly interacting or chaotic systems in several experiments.
Excited-state quantum phase transitions extend the quantum phase transition concept beyond the ground state and offer insights into the complex behavior of quantum systems. In the present work we assess the use of the multiple quantum coherence spectrum as a valid tool to probe excited-state quantum phase transitions within the framework of the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model. The time dependence and the long-time average of the multiple quantum coherence spectrum reveal the intricate dynamics that stems from the existence of singularities in the excited-state spectrum of a quantum many-body system.