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arXiv:1903.09652 · Physical Review Research

Quench, thermalization, and residual entropy across a non-Fermi liquid to Fermi liquid transition

Arijit Haldar, Prosenjit Haldar, Surajit Bera, Ipsita Mandal, Sumilan Banerjee

Published Mar 12, 2020• 38 citations
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Abstract

This work shows how a Fermi liquid evolves to a non-Fermi liquid and vice versa after a quantum quench in a model with a quantum critical point separating the two states. The quench is achieved by joining a fermion cluster having Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev-type interactions and a cluster of non-interacting fermions having Fermi liquid behavior. The critical point is approached when the sizes of the two clusters become equal.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.2.013307

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This work shows how a Fermi liquid evolves to a non-Fermi liquid and vice versa after a quantum quench in a model with a quantum critical point separating the two states. The quench is achieved by joining a fermion cluster having Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev-type interactions and a cluster of non-interacting fermions having Fermi liquid behavior. The critical point is approached when the sizes of the two clusters become equal.
We study the thermalization, after sudden and slow quenches, in an interacting model having a quantum phase transition from a Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) non-Fermi liquid (NFL) to a Fermi liquid (FL). The model has SYK fermions coupled to noninteracting lead fermions and can be realized in a graphene flake connected to external leads. A sudden quench to the NFL leads to rapid thermalization via collapse-revival oscillations of the quasiparticle residue of the lead fermions. In contrast, the quench to the FL shows multiple prethermal regimes and much slower thermalization. In the slow quench performed over a time τ, we find that the excitation energy generated has a remarkable intermediate-τ nonanalytic power-law dependence, τ−η with η<1, which seemingly masks the dynamical manifestation of the initial residual entropy of the SYK fermions. Our study gives an explicit demonstration of the intriguing contrasts between the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a NFL and a FL in terms of their thermalization and approach to adiabaticity.
We propose a simple solvable variant of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model which displays a quantum phase transition from a fast-scrambling non-Fermi liquid to disordered Fermi liquid. Like the canonical SYK model, our variant involves a single species of Majorana fermions connected by all-to-all random four-fermion interactions. The phase transition is driven by a random two-fermion term added to the Hamiltonian whose structure is inspired by proposed solid-state realizations of the SYK model. Analytic expressions for the saddle-point solutions at a large number NNN of fermions are obtained and show a characteristic scale-invariant ${\ensuremath{\sim}|\ensuremath{\omega}|}^{\ensuremath{-}1/2}$ behavior of the spectral function below the transition which is replaced by a ${\ensuremath{\sim}|\ensuremath{\omega}|}^{\ensuremath{-}1/3}$ singularity exactly at the critical point. These results are confirmed by numerical solutions of the saddle-point equations and discussed in the broader context of the field.
We study the quantum quench of the Yukawa-Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and one of its random hopping extensions with q fermions and one boson. Several equilibrium properties are computed for general q with different parameter scaling within the large- N dynamical mean-field scheme. The non-Fermi liquid quench dynamics are studied by integrating the Kadanoff-Baym equations for switching off the random hopping term with constant Yukawa coupling or quenching to different final Yukawa couplings. The postquench oscillations and relaxation dynamics are insensitive to the quench amplitudes deep inside the non-Fermi liquid phase. With weak hopping coupling quenches, we find universal thermalization dynamics similar to the SYK model; however, with two temperatures and two distinct relaxation rates for bosons and fermions, both signal Planckian relaxations without quasiparticles, as in strange metals.
Some of the most interesting phenomena in condensed matter occur in high-temperature superconductors and heavy fermions, and arise from a parent non-Fermi-liquid background. Although the non-Fermi-liquid phase has metallic character, it is very different from typical metals in that the electronic excitations are not particlelike (no quasiparticles), and this has lead to these phases eluding a clear theoretical description. Here, the authors develop a model that provides a route to describe non-Fermi liquids realized in condensed matter systems. Building on the zero-dimensional Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model that is inspired by connections between a non-Fermi liquid and black holes, the authors construct a model in a lattice system where the bands touch to give a divergent density of states (Lifshitz point). The resulting non-Fermi-liquid phases exhibit intriguing properties such as scaling symmetry, nontrivial power-law dependence of entropy on temperature, and fast information scrambling with rate linear in temperature, as well as dynamical transitions to more conventional phases with well-defined quasiparticles.
We study the nonequilibrium quench dynamics of a mixed Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, with competing two-body random interactions leading to maximally chaotic non-Fermi liquid dynamics and a single body term which dominates at low temperatures and leads to Fermi liquid behavior. For different quench protocols, including sudden switching of two-body interaction and double quench protocols, we solve the large NNN real-time Dyson equation on the Keldysh contour and compute the dynamics of Green's functions from which we obtain effective temperature and relaxation rates. We show that the model thermalizes to a finite temperature equilibrium and that depending on the value of the quench parameters, the effective temperature can be below or above the Fermi-liquid to non-Fermi liquid crossover scale, which can then be accessed through the nonequilibrium dynamics. We identify quench protocols for which the heating dynamics slow down significantly---an effect that we interpret as a signature of prethermalization.
We describe the nonequilibrium quench dynamics of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models of fermions with random all-to-all interactions. These provide tractable models of the dynamics of quantum systems without quasiparticle excitations. The Kadanoff-Baym equations show that, at long times, the fermion two-point function has a thermal form at a final temperature determined by energy conservation, and the numerical analysis is consistent with a thermalization rate proportional to this temperature. We also obtain an exact analytic solution of the quench dynamics in the large qqq limit of a model with qqq fermion interactions: in this limit, the thermalization of the two-point function is instantaneous.