Abstract We investigate a stochastic approach to non-equilibrium quantum spin systems based on recent insights linking quantum and classical dynamics. Exploiting a sequence of exact transformations, quantum expectation values can be recast as averages over classical stochastic processes. We illustrate this approach for the quantum Ising model by extracting the Loschmidt amplitude and the magnetization dynamics from the numerical solution of stochastic differential equations. We show that dynamical quantum phase transitions following quantum quenches from the ferromagnetic ground state are accompanied by signatures in the classical distribution functions, including enhanced fluctuations. We demonstrate that the method is capable of handling integrable and non-integrable problems in a unified framework, including those in higher dimensions.
Abstract We investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of isolated quantum spin systems via an exact mapping to classical stochastic differential equations. We show that one can address significantly larger system sizes than recently obtained, including two-dimensional systems with up to 49 spins. We demonstrate that the results for physical observables are in excellent agreement with exact results and alternative numerical techniques where available. We further develop a hybrid stochastic approach involving matrix product states. In the presence of finite numerical sampling, we show that the non-Hermitian character of the stochastic representation leads to the growth of the norm of the time-evolving quantum state and to departures for physical observables at late times. We demonstrate approaches that correct for this and discuss the prospects for further development.
Recent experimental advances have inspired the development of theoretical tools to describe the non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum systems. Among them an exact representation of quantum spin systems in terms of classical stochastic processes has been proposed. Here we provide first steps towards the extension of this stochastic approach to bosonic systems by considering the one-dimensional quantum quartic oscillator. We show how to exactly parameterize the time evolution of this prototypical model via the dynamics of a set of classical variables. We interpret these variables as stochastic processes, which allows us to propose a novel way to numerically simulate the time evolution of the system. We benchmark our findings by considering analytically solvable limits and providing alternative derivations of known results.
Stochastic methods are ubiquitous to a variety of fields, ranging from physics to economics and mathematics. In many cases, in the investigation of natural processes, stochasticity arises every time one considers the dynamics of a system in contact with a somewhat bigger system, an environment with which it is considered in thermal equilibrium. Any small fluctuation of the environment has some random effect on the system. In physics, stochastic methods have been applied to the investigation of phase transitions, thermal and electrical noise, thermal relaxation, quantum information, Brownian motion and so on. In this review, we will focus on the so-called stochastic Schrödinger equation. This is useful as a starting point to investigate the dynamics of open quantum systems capable of exchanging energy and momentum with an external environment. We discuss in some detail the general derivation of a stochastic Schrödinger equation and some of its recent applications to spin thermal transport, thermal relaxation, and Bose-Einstein condensation. We thoroughly discuss the advantages of this formalism with respect to the more common approach in terms of the reduced density matrix. The applications discussed here constitute only a few examples of a much wider range of applicability.
The study of quantum dynamics is an increasingly important aspect of atomic, molecular and optical physics, as well as condensed-matter physics and other disciplines. It is essential in order to understand non-equilibrium phenomena which do not fit within the framework of equilibrium thermodynamics, such as many-body localization, dynamical quantum phase transitions, and non-equilibrium steady states in driven-dissipative systems. However, the exact calculation of dynamical observables is extremely difficult in general for several reasons, which makes it challenging for theoretical predictions and analyses to keep pace with rapidly advancing experiments. In this thesis I use and develop several computational methods to investigate the dynamics of quantum many-body systems, with the two goals of better understanding the evolution of local observables and correlation functions in spin and Fermion systems as well as creating and testing more effective numerical methods for solving quantum dynamics problems. I explore quantum dynamics by using Hamiltonian parameter quenches in several commonly-used models in AMO physics and elsewhere: the Fermi-Hubbard model, the XXZ model, and the transverse-Ising model. The first represents a system of short-range interacting Fermions, while the latter two represent spin systems with different spin-spin couplings and magnetic field terms. All of these models can be realized in current experiments. First, I derive an exact solution for an extreme interaction quench in the Fermi-Hubbard model, from a strongly-interacting initial state to a noninteracting final Hamiltonian. From this result I show that there are nontrivial transient connected correlations, despite the fact that the system has very high temperature and a noninteracting Hamiltonian. Those features would suppress such correlations in equilibrium, but the dynamical correlations are still significant. Then, I develop and examine two numerical methods for solving dynamics of the spin expectation values and correlation functions in the transverse-Ising and XXZ models. Both methods rely on approximating a thermodynamically large system with a much smaller and more computationally tractable cluster of lattice sites, or a series of clusters. The first method is a dynamical numerical linked cluster expansion (NLCE). NLCEs have already been used successfully on systems in thermodynamic equilibrium, and I extended the technique to directly compute the dynamics of an observable after a quantum quench. I review the general NLCE method, describe my dynamical variant of it, and compute the quench dynamics of spin and correlation observables in the transverse-Ising and XXZ models. The second method, which I term the adaptive-boundary cluster method, relies on recently refined bounds on information propagation in quantum systems to choose a cluster of lattice sites that minimizes the finite size error bound of a dynamical computation. I briefly review these bounds, and describe a new algorithm which uses them to construct a cluster whose boundary is chosen according to a related error estimate. Such an adaptive-boundary cluster has the property that there exists a computable upper bound on the finite size error of observables measured at the cluster center, and this error bound is nearly minimal when compared to that of other clusters of the same size. I then compute the quench dynamics of spin and correlation observables in the transverse-Ising model using the adaptive boundary clusters. I apply this method to both uniform and strongly disordered systems. To evaluate the effectiveness of both dynamical NLCE and adaptive-boundary clusters, I compare the results obtained using them to results from a standard and general purpose numerical method: exact solvers applied a rectangular cluster with periodic boundary conditions. Both of the new methods usually converge faster and are more accurate than the standard method for comparable cluster sizes. This thesis illustrates that choosing numerical methods which take advantage of the geometric and entanglement structure of the initial state and Hamiltonian can substantially enhance our ability to study quantum dynamics, by reducing the computational cost of numerically exact solutions. I conclude with a discussion of various avenues for future research to build on this work.
This thesis presents our work on two separate subfields and has for this reason been divided into two parts: (I) the development and implementation of a numerical technique for non-equilibrium dynamics and a (II) detailed investigation of the dirty-boson problem. In part (I), we optimize and develop the quantum phase space method known as the positive-P representation (PPR) specifically for the simulations of the real time quench dynamics of quantum spin systems. The main benefit of this approach is that the dynamics of the density operator is mapped onto
∼N stochastic variables (where
N is the size of the system) that obey Langevin-type stochastic differential equations, thereby greatly reducing the complexity of the problem. The first publication presents our initial use of the PPR on spin systems by using a Schwinger mapping for spin operators on to Bosonic operators since the underlying basis comprises of Bosonic coherent states. We simulate the quench dynamics of the generalized transverse-field spin-1/2 XXZ model in 1d showing that simulations of up to 100 spins are possible, albeit for relatively short simulation times. In our second publication, we reformulate the PPR using SU(2) spin coherent states and further optimize simulation lifetimes by implementing an extrapolation scheme, to achieve several-fold improvements over the results of our first publication. We focus solely on the transverse Ising model and simulate its quench dynamics in 1d and 2d using up to
104 spins, while significantly extending simulation lifetimes. The second part of this thesis is a numerical study of the universality class of the Superfluid-Bose Glass transition of the dirty-boson system. Recently the longstanding exact result
z=d, where
z is the dynamic critical exponent and
d is the dimensionality of the system, has been challenged by a series of numerical studies, suggesting the alternative scenario that
z should be instead unconstrained. To address this controversy, we use large scale quantum Monte-Carlo simulations on two independent quantum models, and average over
5×104−105 disorder realizations to numerically determine the universality class of the dirty-boson transition, paying particular attention to the dynamic critical exponent,
z and without any biasing assumptions.