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arXiv:1908.01013 · Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment

Free fermions with a localized source

P. L. Krapivsky, Kirone Mallick, Dries Sels

Published Nov 1, 2019• 37 citations
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Abstract

Abstract We study an open quantum system of free fermions on an infinite lattice coupled to a localized particle source. In the long time limit, the total number of fermions in the system increases linearly with growth rate dependent on the lattice geometry and dimensionality. We express the growth rate in terms of lattice Green functions and derive explicit formulae in one dimension and for the square lattice. The interplay between the dynamics and the coupling to the environment leads, in contrast to classical systems, to a non-monotonic dependence of the particle growth rate on the input rate. We show that for all lattices the particle growth rate is inversely proportional to the input rate when the latter becomes large. This is a manifestation of the quantum Zeno effect.

DOI
10.1088/1742-5468/ab4e8e

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Abstract We study an open quantum system of free fermions on an infinite lattice coupled to a localized particle source. In the long time limit, the total number of fermions in the system increases linearly with growth rate dependent on the lattice geometry and dimensionality. We express the growth rate in terms of lattice Green functions and derive explicit formulae in one dimension and for the square lattice. The interplay between the dynamics and the coupling to the environment leads, in contrast to classical systems, to a non-monotonic dependence of the particle growth rate on the input rate. We show that for all lattices the particle growth rate is inversely proportional to the input rate when the latter becomes large. This is a manifestation of the quantum Zeno effect.
Abstract We analyze the time evolution of an open quantum system driven by a localized source of bosons. We consider non-interacting identical bosons that are injected into a single lattice site and perform a continuous time quantum walks on a lattice. We show that the average number of bosons grows exponentially with time when the input rate exceeds a certain lattice-dependent critical value. Below the threshold, the growth is quadratic in time, which is still much faster than the naive linear in time growth. We compute the critical input rate for hyper-cubic lattices and find that it is positive in all dimensions d except for d = 2 where the critical input rate vanishes—the growth is always exponential in two dimensions. To understand the exponential growth, we construct an explicit microscopic Hamiltonian model which gives rise to the open system dynamics once the bath is traced out. Exponential growth is identified with a region of dynamic instability of the Hamiltonian system.
We investigate the dynamics of full counting statistics (FCS) of the growth of the total number of fermions in a one-dimensional non-interacting lattice subjected to a localized particle gain (source) at one edge. The dynamics of the setup is modeled by the Gorini--Kossakowski--Sudarshan--Lindblad (GKSL) quantum master equation. We recast the counting problem that involves counting particle number at every lattice site to a problem where only the local injected site is involved. We employ the Schwinger-Keldysh path integral formalism within the GKSL framework and derive an analytical expression for the cumulant generating function at arbitrary times and obtain a Levitov-Lesovik type formula in the long-time limit, earlier derived for boundary driven setups in the steady-state. For clean lattices with either short- or long-range hopping, supporting single-particle delocalized eigenstates, we show that all cumulants grow linearly with time in the asymptotic regime. Our analytical results are in excellent agreement with direct numerical simulations. These findings establish a general framework for characterizing FCS and quantum fluctuations in driven open fermionic systems with localized particle injection.
The aim of this work is to study the dynamics of quantum systems subjected to a localized fermionic source in the presence of bulk dephasing. We consider two classes of one-dimensional lattice systems: (i) a non-interacting lattice with nearest-neighbor and beyond, i.e., long-ranged (power-law) hopping, and (ii) a lattice that is interacting via short-range interactions modeled by a fermionic quartic Hamiltonian. We study the evolution of the local density profile ni(t)n_i(t)ni​(t) within the system and the growth of the total particle number N(t)N(t)N(t) in it. For case (i), we provide analytical insights into the dynamics of the nearest-neighbor model using an adiabatic approximation, which relies on assuming faster relaxation of coherences of the single particle density matrix. For case (ii), we perform numerical computations using the time-evolving block decimation (TEBD) algorithm and analyze the density profile and the growth exponent in N(t)N(t)N(t). Our detailed study reveals an interesting interplay between Hamiltonian dynamics and various environmentally induced mechanisms in open quantum systems, such as local source and bulk dephasing. It brings out rich dynamics, including universal dynamical scaling and anomalous behavior across various time scales and is of relevance to various quantum simulation platforms.
We study a one-dimensional lattice system of free fermions subjected to a generalized measurement process: the system exchanges particles with its environment, but each fermion leaving or entering the system is counted. In contrast to the freezing of dynamics due to frequent measurements of lattice site occupation numbers, a high rate of fermion counts induces fast fluctuations in the state of the system. Still, through numerical simulations of quantum trajectories and an analytical approach based on replica Keldysh field theory, we find that instantaneous correlations and entanglement properties of free fermions subjected to fermion counting and local occupation measurements are strikingly similar. We explain this similarity through a generalized Zeno effect induced by fermion counting and a universal long-wavelength description in terms of a nonlinear sigma model. The physical requirements underlying this universal emergent behavior are conservation of the total number of particles in the system and its environment, and conservation of the purity of the state of the system by keeping a full record of all measurement outcomes. For both types of measurement processes, we present strong evidence against the existence of a critical phase with logarithmic entanglement and conformal invariance. Instead, we identify a finite critical range of length scales on which signatures of conformal invariance are observable. While area-law entanglement is established beyond a scale that is exponentially large in the measurement rate, the upper boundary of the critical range is only algebraically large and thus numerically accessible. Our finding that these properties do not rely on particle-number conservation has far-reaching implications for measurement-induced phenomena beyond noninteracting fermions, such as charge sharpening in random quantum circuits or generic interacting systems.
We analyse the discrete-time dynamics of a model of non-interacting fermions coupled to an infinite reservoir formed by a bosonic quantum walk on Z{\mathbb Z}Z. This dynamics consists of consecutive applications of free evolutions of the fermions and bosons followed by a local coupling between them. The unitary operator implementing this coupling accounts for energy exchanges between the system and reservoir while it preserves the number of fermions. The free fermion evolution is given by a second-quantized single-particle unitary operator satisfying some genericity assumptions. The free boson evolution is given by the second-quantized shift operator on Z{\mathbb Z}Z. We derive explicitly the Heisenberg dynamics of fermionic observables and obtain a systematic expansion in the large-coupling regime, which we control by using spectral methods. We also prove that the reduced state of the fermions converges in the large-time limit to a mixture of infinite-temperature Gibbs states in each particle sector.
We study the quantum dynamics of filling an empty lattice of size LLL by connecting it locally with an equilibrium thermal bath that injects noninteracting bosons or fermions. We adopt four different approaches, namely, (i) direct exact numerics, (ii) Redfield equation, (iii) Lindblad equation, and (iv) quantum Langevin equation, which are unique in their ways for solving the time dynamics and the steady state. In this simple setup we investigate open quantum dynamics and subsequent approach to thermalization. The quantities of interest that we consider are the spatial density profile and the total number of bosons and fermions in the lattice. The spatial spread is ballistic in nature and the local occupation eventually settles down owing to equilibration. The ballistic spread of local density admits a universal scaling form. We show that this universality is only seen when the condition of detailed balance is satisfied by the baths. The difference between bosons and fermions shows up in the early time growth rate and the saturation values of the profile. The techniques developed here are applicable to systems in arbitrary dimensions and for arbitrary geometries.