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arXiv:2108.11408 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Fragility of classical Hamiltonian period doubling to quantum fluctuations

Reyhaneh Khasseh, Angelo Russomanno, Rosario Fazio

Published Oct 21, 2021• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We add quantum fluctuations to a classical period-doubling Hamiltonian time crystal, replacing the $N$ classical interacting angular momenta with quantum spins of size $l$. The full permutation symmetry of the Hamiltonian allows a mapping to a bosonic model and the application of exact diagonalization for a quite large system size. In the thermodynamic limit $N\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$ the model is described by a system of Gross-Pitaevskii equations whose classical-chaos properties closely mirror the finite-$N$ quantum chaos. For $N\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$, and $l$ finite, Rabi oscillations mark the absence of persistent period doubling, which is recovered for $l\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$ with Rabi-oscillation frequency tending exponentially to 0. For the chosen initial conditions, we can represent this model in terms of Pauli matrices and apply the discrete truncated Wigner approximation. For finite $l$ this approximation reproduces no Rabi oscillations but correctly predicts the absence of period doubling. Our results show the instability of time-translation symmetry breaking in this classical system even to the smallest quantum fluctuations, because of tunneling effects.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.104.134309

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We add quantum fluctuations to a classical period-doubling Hamiltonian time crystal, replacing the NNN classical interacting angular momenta with quantum spins of size lll. The full permutation symmetry of the Hamiltonian allows a mapping to a bosonic model and the application of exact diagonalization for a quite large system size. In the thermodynamic limit N\ensuremath→\ensuremath∞N\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}N\ensuremath→\ensuremath∞ the model is described by a system of Gross-Pitaevskii equations whose classical-chaos properties closely mirror the finite-NNN quantum chaos. For N\ensuremath→\ensuremath∞N\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}N\ensuremath→\ensuremath∞, and lll finite, Rabi oscillations mark the absence of persistent period doubling, which is recovered for l\ensuremath→\ensuremath∞l\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}l\ensuremath→\ensuremath∞ with Rabi-oscillation frequency tending exponentially to 0. For the chosen initial conditions, we can represent this model in terms of Pauli matrices and apply the discrete truncated Wigner approximation. For finite lll this approximation reproduces no Rabi oscillations but correctly predicts the absence of period doubling. Our results show the instability of time-translation symmetry breaking in this classical system even to the smallest quantum fluctuations, because of tunneling effects.
We develop a consistent perturbation theory in quantum fluctuations around the classical evolution of a system of interacting bosons. The zero-order approximation gives the classical Gross-Pitaevskii equations. In the next order we recover the truncated Wigner approximation, where the evolution is still classical but the initial conditions are distributed according to the Wigner transform of the initial density matrix. Further corrections can be characterized as quantum scattering events, which appear in the form of a nonlinear response of the observable to an infinitesimal displacement of the field along its classical evolution. At the end of the paper we give a few numerical examples to test the formalism.
We propose a Floquet period-doubling time-crystal model based on a disordered interacting long-range spin chain where the periodic swapping of nearby spin couples is applied. This protocol can be applied to systems with any local spin magnitude sss and in principle also to systems with nonspin (fermionic or bosonic) local Hilbert space. We explicitly consider the cases s=1/2s=1/2s=1/2 and s=1s=1s=1, using analytical and numerical methods to show that the time-crystal behavior appears in a range of parameters. In particular, we study the persistence of period-doubling oscillations in time and the time-crystal properties of the Floquet spectrum (quasienergy $\ensuremath{\pi}$-spectral pairing and long-range correlations of the Floquet states), and introduce a quantity (the local imbalance) to assess what initial states give rise to a period-doubling dynamics. We also consider the quasienergy average level-spacing ratio, and find that the interval of parameters where the system dose not thermalize and persistent period doubling is possible corresponds to the one where the Floquet spectrum shows time-crystal properties.
We study synchronization between periodically driven, interacting classical spins undergoing a Hamiltonian dynamics. In the thermodynamic limit there is a transition between a regime where all the spins oscillate synchronously for an infinite time with a period twice the driving period (synchronized regime) and a regime where the oscillations die after a finite transient (chaotic regime). We emphasize the peculiarity of our result, having been synchronization observed so far only in driven-dissipative systems. We discuss how our findings can be interpreted as a period-doubling time crystal and we show that synchronization can appear both for an overall regular and overall chaotic dynamics.
Discrete time crystals (DTCs) are phases of matter characterized by the presence of an observable evolving with nTnTnT periodicity under a TTT-periodic Hamiltonian, where n>1n>1n>1 is an integer insensitive to small parameter variations. In particular, DTCs with n=2n=2n=2 have been extensively studied in periodically quenched and kicked spin systems in recent years. In this paper, we study the emergence of DTCs in a many-body system whose semiclassical mean-field dynamics is nonintegrable, using a rather simple model depicting a harmonically driven spin chain. We advocate to first employ a semiclassical approximation to arrive at a mean-field Hamiltonian and then identify the parameter regime at which DTCs exist, with standard tools borrowed from studies of classical chaos. Specifically, we seek symmetric-breaking solutions by examining the stable islands on the Poincar\'e surface of section of the mean-field Hamiltonian. We then turn to the actual many-body quantum system, evaluate the stroboscopic dynamics of the total magnetization in the full quantum limit, and verify the existence of DTCs. Our effective and straightforward approach indicates that in general DTCs are one natural aspect of many-body quantum chaos with mixed classical phase space structure. Our approach can also be applied to general time-periodic systems, which is thus promising for finding DTCs with n>2n>2n>2 and opening possibilities for exploring DTCs properties beyond their time-translational breaking features.
Two approaches to quantum-classical correspondence are distinguished according to the classical dynamical theory with which quantum theory is compared. The first of these, Ehrenfest correspondence, defines a dynamical regime in which the quantum expectation values follow approximately a classical trajectory. The second of these, Liouville correspondence, applies when the quantum probability distributions remain well approximated by a density in the classical phase space. The former applies only for narrow states, whereas the latter may remain valid even for quantum states that have spread to the system size. A spin model is adopted for this correspondence study because the quantum state is discrete and finite- dimensional, and thus no artificial truncation of the Hilbert space is required. The quantum time-evolution is given by a discrete unitary mapping. The corresponding classical model is volume-preserving (non-dissipative) and the time-evolution is given by a symplectic map. In classically chaotic regimes, the widths of initially narrow quantum states grow, on average, exponentially with time, until saturation at the system size. This initial spreading rate is well approximated by the classical Lyapunov exponent when the accessible classical phase space is predominantly chaotic. Because of the exponential growth rate of the quantum variance, the Ehrenfest regime is delimited by a break-time that grows logarithmically with increasing quantum numbers. The small differences between quantum expectation values and corresponding Liouville averages of dynamical variables also grow exponentially, initially, if the classical behaviour is chaotic. This exponential rate is independent of h and consistently larger than the classical Lyapunov exponent by at least a factor of two. Interestingly, this exponential growth rate does not continue until these differences approach magnitudes of order the system size, but crosses over to power-law growth (or simply saturates), when the differences have reached magnitudes no larger than order ħ. Because of the exponential growth of these quantum-classical differences, the Liouville regime is also delimited by a break-time that grows logarithmically with increasing quantum numbers. However, due to the early saturation of the exponential growth of the differences, the Liouville log break-time applies only in a restricted domain. After spreading to the system size, the quantum states relax to an approximately time-independent state. This is characterised by equilibrium distributions that are subject to rapidly oscillating fluctuations about the coarse-grained classical steady-state. If the accessible classical phase space is predominantly chaotic, then the equilibrium quantum probability distributions are nearly microcanonical. Otherwise the steady-state quantum probability distributions accurately reflect the details of the KAM surfaces in the classical phase space. The equilibrium regime quantum fluctuations, which are quantum-classical differences, are shown to approach zero as a negative power of the quantum numbers. Since the differences between quantum expectation values and individual classical trajectories grow exponentially in time to a magnitude that scales with the system size, the Ehrenfest regime is delimited by an unrestricted log break-time. The log break-time may be short compared to experimental time-scales for some chaotic macroscopic bodies, and, as a result, an observable breakdown of Ehrenfest correspondence may arise for some macroscopic systems. Although the Liouville regime is also delimited by a log break-time, an observable breakdown of correspondence between quantum mechanics and Liouville mechanics for macroscopic bodies is not likely since their differences, expressed relative to the dimensions of the observable, approach zero in the limit of large quantum numbers.
We study the dynamics of a three-mode bosonic system with mode-changing interactions. For large mode occupations the short-time dynamics is well described by classical mean-field equations allowing us to study chaotic dynamics in the classical system and its signatures in the corresponding quantum dynamics. By introducing a symmetry-breaking term we tune the classical dynamics from integrable to strongly chaotic, which we demonstrate by calculating Poincar\'e sections and Lyapunov exponents. The corresponding quantum system features level statistics that change from Poissonian in the integrable to Wigner-Dyson in the chaotic case. We investigate the behavior of out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs), specifically the squared commutator, for initial states located in regular and chaotic regions of the classical mixed phase space and find marked differences between the two cases. The short-time behavior is well captured by semi-classical truncated Wigner simulations directly relating these features to properties of the underlying classical mean-field dynamics. We discuss a possible experimental realization of this model system in a Bose-Einstein condensate of rubidium atoms, which allows reversing the sign of the Hamiltonian required for measuring OTOCs.