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arXiv:2109.03714 · Physical Review A

Quantum quench thermodynamics at high temperatures

Adalberto D. Varizi, Raphael C. Drumond, Gabriel Teixeira Landi

Published Jun 29, 2022• 4 citations
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Abstract

The entropy produced when a system undergoes an infinitesimal quench is directly linked to the work parameter susceptibility, making it sensitive to the existence of a quantum critical point. Its singular behavior at $T=0$, however, disappears as the temperature is raised, hindering its use as a tool for spotting quantum phase transitions. Notwithstanding, the entropy production can be split into classical and quantum components, related with changes in populations and coherences. In this paper we show that these individual contributions can continue to exhibit signatures of the quantum phase transition, even at arbitrarily high temperatures. This is a consequence of their intrinsic connection to the derivatives of the energy eigenvalues and the energy eigenbasis. We illustrate our results in the Landau-Zener model and the prototypical quantum critical system, the $XY$ model.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.105.062218

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The entropy produced when a system undergoes an infinitesimal quench is directly linked to the work parameter susceptibility, making it sensitive to the existence of a quantum critical point. Its singular behavior at T=0T=0T=0, however, disappears as the temperature is raised, hindering its use as a tool for spotting quantum phase transitions. Notwithstanding, the entropy production can be split into classical and quantum components, related with changes in populations and coherences. In this paper we show that these individual contributions can continue to exhibit signatures of the quantum phase transition, even at arbitrarily high temperatures. This is a consequence of their intrinsic connection to the derivatives of the energy eigenvalues and the energy eigenbasis. We illustrate our results in the Landau-Zener model and the prototypical quantum critical system, the XYXYXY model.
The irreversible work during a driving protocol constitutes one of the most widely studied measures in nonequilibrium thermodynamics, as it constitutes a proxy for entropy production. In quantum systems, it has been shown that the irreversible work has an additional, genuinely quantum mechanical contribution, due to coherence produced by the driving protocol. The goal of this paper is to explore this contribution in systems that undergo a quantum phase transition. Substantial effort has been dedicated in recent years to understanding the role of quantum criticality in work protocols. However, practically nothing is known about how coherence contributes to it. To shed light on this issue, we study the entropy production in infinitesimal quenches of the one-dimensional XY model. We find that coherence plays a significant role in the entropy production and can even account for most of it in certain situations. Moreover, at low temperatures, the coherence presents a finite cusp at the critical point, whereas the entropy production diverges logarithmically. For high temperatures, however, the coherence presents a kink at the critical point indicating the quantum phase transition that occurs only at T=0. Alternatively, if the quench is performed in the anisotropy parameter, then we find that there are situations where all of the entropy produced is due to quantum coherences.
Using the scaling relation of the ground state quantum fidelity, we propose the most generic scaling relations of the irreversible work (the residual energy) of a closed quantum system at absolute zero temperature when one of the parameters of its Hamiltonian is suddenly changed. We consider two extreme limits: the heat susceptibility limit and the thermodynamic limit. It is argued that the irreversible entropy generated for a thermal quench at low enough temperatures when the system is initially in a Gibbs state is likely to show a similar scaling behavior. To illustrate this proposition, we consider zero-temperature and thermal quenches in one-dimensional (1D) and 2D Dirac Hamiltonians where the exact estimation of the irreversible work and the irreversible entropy is possible. Exploiting these exact results, we then establish the following. (i) The irreversible work at zero temperature shows an appropriate scaling in the thermodynamic limit. (ii) The scaling of the irreversible work in the 1D Dirac model at zero temperature shows logarithmic corrections to the scaling, which is a signature of a marginal situation. (iii) Remarkably, the logarithmic corrections do indeed appear in the scaling of the entropy generated if the temperature is low enough while they disappear for high temperatures. For the 2D model, no such logarithmic correction is found to appear.
We study the dynamical response of a system to a sudden change of the tuning parameter $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ starting (or ending) at the quantum critical point. In particular, we analyze the scaling of the excitation probability, number of excited quasiparticles, heat and entropy with the quench amplitude, and the system size. We extend the analysis to quenches with arbitrary power law dependence on time of the tuning parameter, showing a close connection between the scaling behavior of these quantities with the singularities of the adiabatic susceptibilities of order mmm at the quantum critical point, where mmm is related to the power of the quench. Precisely for sudden quenches, the relevant susceptibility of the second order coincides with the fidelity susceptibility. We discuss the generalization of the scaling laws to the finite-temperature quenches and show that the statistics of the low-energy excitations becomes important. We illustrate the relevance of those results for cold-atom experiments.
Abstract The entropy produced when a quantum system is driven away from equilibrium can be decomposed in two parts, one related with populations and the other with quantum coherences. The latter is usually based on the so-called relative entropy of coherence, a widely used quantifier in quantum resource theories. In this paper we argue that, despite satisfying fluctuation theorems and having a clear resource-theoretic interpretation, this splitting has shortcomings. First, it predicts that at low temperatures the entropy production will always be dominated by the classical term, irrespective of the quantum nature of the process. Second, for infinitesimal quenches, the radius of convergence diverges exponentially as the temperature decreases, rendering the functions non-analytic. Motivated by this, we provide here a complementary approach, where the entropy production is split in a way such that the contributions from populations and coherences are written in terms of a thermal state of a specially dephased Hamiltonian. The physical interpretation of our proposal is discussed in detail. We also contrast the two approaches by studying work protocols in a transverse field Ising chain, and a macrospin of varying dimension.
Symmetries play a central role in both equilibrium and nonequilibrium phase transitions, yet their quantitative characterization in dynamical quantum phase transitions (DQPTs) remains an open challenge. In this work, we establish a direct connection between symmetry properties of a many-body model and measures of quantum asymmetry, showing that asymmetry monotones provide a robust and physically transparent indicator of dynamical quantum criticality. Focusing on the quenched Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, we demonstrate that asymmetry measures associated with collective spin generators faithfully capture the onset of DQPTs, reflecting the dynamical restoration or breaking of underlying symmetries. Remarkably, the time-averaged asymmetry exhibits clear signatures of the dynamical critical point, in close correspondence with both the dynamical order parameter and the behavior of entropy production. We further uncover a quantitative link between asymmetry generation and thermodynamic irreversibility, showing that peaks in asymmetry coincide with maximal entropy production across the transition. Our results position asymmetry as a unifying concept bridging symmetry, information-theoretic quantifiers, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics in dynamical quantum phase transitions, providing a powerful framework for understanding critical dynamics beyond traditional order parameters.