We study inhomogeneous 1+1-dimensional quantum many-body systems described by Tomonaga-Luttinger-liquid theory with general propagation velocity and Luttinger parameter varying smoothly in space, equivalent to an inhomogeneous compactification radius for free boson conformal field theory. This model appears prominently in low-energy descriptions, including for trapped ultracold atoms, while here we present an application to quantum Hall edges with inhomogeneous interactions. The dynamics is shown to be governed by a pair of coupled continuity equations identical to inhomogeneous Dirac-Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations with a local gap and solved by analytical means. We obtain their exact Green's functions and scattering matrix using a Magnus expansion, which generalize previous results for conformal interfaces and quantum wires coupled to leads. Our results explicitly describe the late-time evolution following quantum quenches, including inhomogeneous interaction quenches, and Andreev reflections between coupled quantum Hall edges, revealing remarkably universal dependence on details at stationarity or at late times out of equilibrium.
We study inhomogeneous 1+1-dimensional quantum many-body systems described by Tomonaga-Luttinger-liquid theory with general propagation velocity and Luttinger parameter varying smoothly in space, equivalent to an inhomogeneous compactification radius for free boson conformal field theory. This model appears prominently in low-energy descriptions, including for trapped ultracold atoms, while here we present an application to quantum Hall edges with inhomogeneous interactions. The dynamics is shown to be governed by a pair of coupled continuity equations identical to inhomogeneous Dirac-Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations with a local gap and solved by analytical means. We obtain their exact Green's functions and scattering matrix using a Magnus expansion, which generalize previous results for conformal interfaces and quantum wires coupled to leads. Our results explicitly describe the late-time evolution following quantum quenches, including inhomogeneous interaction quenches, and Andreev reflections between coupled quantum Hall edges, revealing remarkably universal dependence on details at stationarity or at late times out of equilibrium.
Recent experimental advances on ultracold atomic gases and trapped ions have made it possible to simulate exactly solvable quantum systems of interacting particles. In particular, the feasibility of making rapid changes, so-called quantum quenches, to such set-ups has allowed experimentalists to probe non-equilibrium phenomena in closed interacting quantum systems. This, in turn, has spurred a considerable theoretical interest in quantum many-body systems out of equilibrium. In this thesis, we study non-equilibrium properties of quantum many-body systems in the framework of exactly solvable quantum field theory in one spatial dimension. Specific systems include interacting fermions described by the Luttinger model and effective descriptions of spin chains using conformal field theory (CFT). Special emphasis is placed on heat and charge transport, studied from the point of view of quench dynamics, and, in particular, the effects of breaking conformal symmetries on transport properties. Examples include the Luttinger model with non-local interactions, breaking Lorentz and scale invariance, and inhomogeneous CFT, which generalizes standard CFT in that the usual propagation velocity v is replaced by a function v(x) that depends smoothly on the position x, breaking translation invariance. The quench dynamics studied here is for quantum quenches between, in general, different smooth inhomogeneous systems. An example of this is the so-called smooth-profile protocol, in which the initial state is defined by, e.g., smooth inhomogeneous profiles of inverse temperature and chemical potential, and the time evolution is governed by a homogeneous Hamiltonian. Using this protocol, we compute exact analytical results for the full time evolution of the systems mentioned above. In particular, we derive finite-time results that are universal in the sense that the same relations between the non-equilibrium dynamics and the initial profiles hold for any unitary CFT. These results also make clear that heat and charge transport in standard CFT are purely ballistic. Finally, we propose and study an inhomogeneous CFT model with v(x) given by a random function. We argue that this model naturally emerges as an effective description of one-dimensional quantum many-body systems with certain static random impurities. Using tools from wave propagation in random media, we show that such impurities lead to normal and anomalous diffusive contributions to heat transport on top of the ballistic one known from standard CFT.
Abstract Tomonaga–Luttinger liquids (TLLs) can be used to effectively describe one-dimensional quantum many-body systems such as ultracold atoms, charges in nanowires, superconducting circuits, and gapless spin chains. Their properties are given by two parameters, the propagation velocity and the Luttinger parameter. Here we study inhomogeneous TLLs where these are promoted to functions of position and demonstrate that they profoundly affect the dynamics: in general, besides curving the light cone, we show that propagation is no longer ballistically localized to the light-cone trajectories, different from standard homogeneous TLLs. Specifically, if the Luttinger parameter depends on position, the dynamics features pronounced spreading into the light cone, which cannot be understood via a simple superposition of waves as in the Huygens–Fresnel principle. This is the case for ultracold atoms in a parabolic trap, which serves as our main motivation, and we discuss possible experimental observations in such systems.
We consider finite-time quantum quenches in the interacting Tomonaga-Luttinger model, for example time-dependent changes of the nearest-neighbor interactions for spinless fermions. We use the exact solutions for specific protocols including the linear and cosine ramps (or, more generally, periodic pumping). We study the dynamics of the total and kinetic energy as well as the Green's functions during as well as after the quench. For the latter we find that the light-cone picture remains applicable; however, the propagating front is delayed as compared to the sudden quench. We extract the universal behavior of the Green's functions and in particular provide analytic, nonperturbative results for the delay applicable to quenches of short to moderate duration but arbitrary time dependency.
We study the quantum quench in two coupled Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquids (TLLs), from the off-critical to the critical regime, relying on the conformal field theory approach and the known solutions for single TLLs. We consider a squeezed form of the initial state, whose low energy limit is fixed in a way to describe a massive and a massless mode, and we encode the non-equilibrium dynamics in a proper rescaling of the time. In this way, we compute several correlation functions, which at leading order factorize into multipoint functions evaluated at different times for the two modes. Depending on the observable, the contribution from the massive or from the massless mode can be the dominant one, giving rise to exponential or power-law decay in time, respectively. Our results find a direct application in all the quench problems where, in the scaling limit, there are two independent massless fields: these include the Hubbard model, the Gaudin-Yang gas, and tunnel-coupled tubes in cold atoms experiments.
Abstract We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of conformal field theory (CFT) in 1+1 dimensions with a smooth position-dependent velocity v(x) explicitly breaking translation invariance. Such inhomogeneous CFT is argued to effectively describe 1+1-dimensional quantum many-body systems with certain inhomogeneities varying on mesoscopic scales. Both heat and charge transport are studied, where, for concreteness, we suppose that our CFT has a conserved U(1) current. Based on projective unitary representations of diffeomorphisms and smooth maps in Minkowskian CFT, we obtain a recipe for computing the exact non-equilibrium dynamics in inhomogeneous CFT when evolving from initial states defined by smooth inverse-temperature and chemical-potential profiles β(x) β ( x ) and μ(x) μ ( x ) . Using this recipe, the following exact analytical results are obtained: (i) the full time evolution of densities and currents for heat and charge transport, (ii) correlation functions for components of the energy–momentum tensor and the U(1) current as well as for any primary field, and (iii) the thermal and electrical conductivities. The latter are computed by direct dynamical considerations and alternatively using a Green–Kubo formula. Both give the same explicit expressions for the conductivities, which reveal how inhomogeneous dynamics opens up the possibility for diffusion as well as implies a generalization of the Wiedemann–Franz law to finite times within CFT.
We study Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids thrown out of equilibrium by marginal deformations in the form of interaction modulations. This is modeled by quenching or periodically driving the Luttinger parameter or, equivalently, the compactification radius of the free boson conformal field theory between two different values. We obtain exact analytical results for the evolution of the Loschmidt echo and observables such as the particle and energy densities. Starting from generic initial states, the quench dynamics are shown to exhibit revivals and temporal orthogonalities. For the periodic drive, we show stability or instability of time-evolved physical quantities dependent on the drive parameters. We also compare the corresponding marginally deformed thermal density matrices by non-perturbatively evaluating their Rényi divergence as a Euclidean quench. All the dynamics are shown to be crucially dependent on the ratio of the Luttinger parameters, which corresponds to the Zamolodchikov distance in the space of marginal deformations. Our setup is equivalently interpreted as the dynamics of the bosonic string upon instantaneous changes of the target-space radius.