We investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics of entanglement entropy and out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) of noninteracting fermions at half-filling starting from a product state to distinguish the delocalized, multifractal (in the limit of nearest neighbor hopping), localized and mixed phases hosted by the quasiperiodic Aubry-André-Harper (AAH) model in the presence of long-range hopping. For sufficiently long-range hopping strength a secondary logarithmic behavior in the entanglement entropy is found in the mixed phases whereas the primary behavior is a power-law the exponent of which is different in different phases. The saturation value of entanglement entropy in the delocalized, multifractal and mixed phases depends linearly on system size whereas in the localized phase (in the short-range regime) it is independent of system size. The early-time growth of OTOC shows very different power-law behaviors in the presence of nearest neighbor hopping and long-range hopping. The late time decay of OTOC leads to noticeably different power-law exponents in different phases. The spatial profile of OTOC and its system-size dependence also provide distinct features to distinguish phases. In the mixed phases the spatial profile of OTOC shows two different dependences on space for small and large distances respectively. Interestingly the spatial profile contains large fluctuations at the special locations related to the quasiperiodicity parameter in the presence of multifractal states.
We investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics of entanglement entropy and out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) of noninteracting fermions at half-filling starting from a product state to distinguish the delocalized, multifractal (in the limit of nearest neighbor hopping), localized and mixed phases hosted by the quasiperiodic Aubry-André-Harper (AAH) model in the presence of long-range hopping. For sufficiently long-range hopping strength a secondary logarithmic behavior in the entanglement entropy is found in the mixed phases whereas the primary behavior is a power-law the exponent of which is different in different phases. The saturation value of entanglement entropy in the delocalized, multifractal and mixed phases depends linearly on system size whereas in the localized phase (in the short-range regime) it is independent of system size. The early-time growth of OTOC shows very different power-law behaviors in the presence of nearest neighbor hopping and long-range hopping. The late time decay of OTOC leads to noticeably different power-law exponents in different phases. The spatial profile of OTOC and its system-size dependence also provide distinct features to distinguish phases. In the mixed phases the spatial profile of OTOC shows two different dependences on space for small and large distances respectively. Interestingly the spatial profile contains large fluctuations at the special locations related to the quasiperiodicity parameter in the presence of multifractal states.
We uncover a systematic structure in the single-particle phase diagram of the quasiperiodic Aubry-Andr\'e-Harper (AAH) model with power-law hoppings ($\ensuremath{\sim}\frac{1}{{r}^{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}$) when the quasiperiodicity parameter is chosen to be a member of the metallic mean family of irrational Diophantine numbers. In addition to the fully delocalized and localized phases, we find a coexistence of multifractal (localized) states with the delocalized states for $\ensuremath{\sigma}<1$ ($\ensuremath{\sigma}>1$). The fraction of delocalized eigenstates in these phases can be obtained from a general sequence, which is a manifestation of a mathematical property of the metallic mean family. The entanglement entropy of the noninteracting many-body ground states respects the area law if the Fermi level belongs in the localized regime while logarithmically violating it if the Fermi level belongs in the delocalized or multifractal regimes. The prefactor of the logarithmically violating term is significantly larger in the delocalized phase in comparison to that in the multifractal phase. Entanglement entropy shows the area law even in the delocalized regime for special filling fractions, which are related to the metallic means.
We study the entanglement dynamics of a one-dimensional chain of monitored non-interacting complex fermions with random power-law hopping characterized by a decay exponent α. For α≲1, in stark contrast with the case of hopping to nearest neighbors, the scaling of the entanglement entropy (EE) of the steady state with system size L is faster than logarithmic for any monitoring or disorder strength and it tends towards a linear (volume-law) scaling for sufficiently small α≲1/2. For α>3/2, the EE is in the area-law phase, namely, no scaling with L, for any monitoring strength. For 1<α≲3/2, we identify an α-dependent measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT) at a critical value of the monitoring strength separating the mentioned area-law and sub-volume-law phases. At this critical point, the EE scales logarithmically with system size, and the density-density correlation function, closely related to the EE, exhibits multifractal features. These results highlight the importance of superdiffusive classical hopping in the entanglement dynamic of quantum many-body systems and also help differentiate its role with respect to conventional sources of entanglement such as genuine quantum non-locality.
We study out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOC) in a free fermionic model with a quasiperiodic potential. This model is equivalent to the Aubry-Andr\'e model and features a phase transition from an extended phase to a localized phase at a nonzero value of the strength of the quasiperiodic potential. We investigate five different time regimes of interest for out-of-time-ordered correlators: early, wave front, x=vBt, late time equilibration, and infinite time. For the early time regime we observe a power law for all potential strengths. For the precursor time regime preceding the wave front we confirm a recently proposed universal form and use it to extract the characteristic velocity of the wave front for the present model. A Gaussian waveform is observed to work well in the time regime surrounding x=vBt, the wave front arrival time. Our main result is for the late time equilibration regime where we derive a finite time equilibration bound for the OTOC, bounding the correlator's distance from its late time value. The bound impose strict limits on equilibration of the OTOC in the extended regime and is valid not only for the Aubry-Andr\'e model but for any quadratic model. Finally, momentum out-of-time-ordered correlators for the Aubry-Andr\'e model are studied where large values of the OTOC are observed at late times at the critical point.
We numerically study the evolution of spectral correlations in the entanglement Hamiltonian (EH) of noninteracting fermions in the Aubry-Andr\'e-Harper (AAH) model. We analyze the time evolution of the EH spectrum in a nonequilibrium setting by studying several quantities: spectral distribution, level statistics, entanglement entropy, and spectral form factor (SFF) in the context of the delocalization-localization transition in the AAH model. It is observed that the SFF of the entanglement spectrum in the delocalized phase and at the phase-transition point evolves in three time intervals. We make a systematic study of the emergence of these three timescales for various initial states and find that the number of time intervals remains 3 unless the Hamiltonian is tuned in the localized phase or when the initial state is maximally entangled, when there is a featureless time evolution. We find a broad direct correlation between the entanglement entropy and the length of the ramp of the SFF. We also find that in the delocalized phase the spectral correlations are stronger in the center of the spectrum and grow progressively weaker as more and more of the spectrum is considered.
The single-particle eigenstates of the Aubry-Andr\'e-Harper model are known to show a delocalization-localization transition at a finite strength of the quasiperiodic disorder. In this work, we point out that an intimate relationship exists between the subband structure of the spectrum and transport properties of the model. To capture the transport properties, we have not only used a variety of single-particle measures like inverse participation ratio, and von Neumann entropy, but also many-particle measures such as persistent current and its variance, and many-body entanglement entropy. The many-particle measures are very sensitive to the subband structure of the spectrum. Even in the delocalized phase, surprisingly the entanglement entropy is substantially suppressed when the Fermi level is in the band gaps, whereas the persistent current is vanishingly small for the same locations of the Fermi level. The entanglement entropy seems to follow area law exclusively for these special locations of Fermi level or filling fractions of free fermions. A study of the standard deviation of persistent current offers further distinguishing features for the special fillings. In the delocalized phase, the standard deviation vs mean persistent current curves are discontinuous for the nonspecial values of filling fractions and continuous (closed) for the special values of filling fractions, whereas in the localized phase, these curves become straight lines for both types of filling fractions. We have also discussed how the results depend on the system size. Our results, especially on the persistent current, can potentially be tested experimentally using the present day setups based on ultracold atoms.
We systematically investigate the entanglement and information dynamics of quasiperiodic systems across their extended, critical, and localized phases, aiming to identify dynamical signatures that can reveal the multifractal spatial structure of critical states and distinguish critical phases from the extended and localized regimes. Focusing on the generalized Aubry-André-Harper model, we complement the half-chain entanglement entropy with the spatially resolved subsystem information capacity (SIC) and demonstrate that critical states exhibit pronounced spatial heterogeneity absent in the extended and localized phases. In the steady state, the SIC reveals a stepwise ramp as a function of subsystem size, reflecting an underlying fragmentation of the chain into weakly connected subregions. Dynamically, information initially localized within such a subregion can undergo coherent long-lived oscillations, dubbed subregion echoes, whose period scales with the subregion length, in quantitative agreement with a quasiparticle picture of confined quasiparticle reflections. We trace this internal fragmentation to the incommensurately distributed zeros (IDZs) in the off-diagonal hopping terms of the Hamiltonian. To establish the generality of the SIC as a diagnostic tool, we further apply it to a mobility-edge phase with coexisting extended and localized states and to a critical phase that does not originate from IDZ fragmentation, and show that the SIC can cleanly distinguish these scenarios through their distinct steady-state profiles, initial-site sensitivities, and the presence or absence of subregion echoes. Our results demonstrate that the SIC serves as a powerful real-space probe for diagnosing critical phases and uncovering the bottlenecked connectivity that underlies the multifractal structure of critical states.