We introduce the concept of quantum weight as a ground-state property of quantum many-body systems that is encoded in the static structure factor and characterizes density fluctuation at long wavelengths. The quantum weight carries a wealth of information about dielectric responses and optical properties of the system and is closely related to its quantum geometry. For systems with short-range interactions or low-dimensional Coulomb systems, we show that the many-body quantum metric (which measures the change of the ground state under twisted boundary conditions) can be determined directly from the quantum weight. Notably, the quantum weight is a property of a single ground state and independent of boundary conditions in the thermodynamic limit. Our finding thus enables direct experimental measurement and numerical calculation of the many-body quantum metric. On the other hand, for three-dimensional Coulomb systems, we show that the quantum weight is distinct from the many-body quantum metric due to dielectric screening in three dimensions. We further use dielectric sum rules to derive upper and lower bounds on the quantum weight of real materials in terms of their electron density, static dielectric constant, and plasmon energy. Our work highlights quantum weight as a fundamental material parameter, which can be experimentally determined by x-ray scattering or electron-loss spectroscopy.
We introduce the concept of quantum weight as a ground-state property of quantum many-body systems that is encoded in the static structure factor and characterizes density fluctuation at long wavelengths. The quantum weight carries a wealth of information about dielectric responses and optical properties of the system and is closely related to its quantum geometry. For systems with short-range interactions or low-dimensional Coulomb systems, we show that the many-body quantum metric (which measures the change of the ground state under twisted boundary conditions) can be determined directly from the quantum weight. Notably, the quantum weight is a property of a single ground state and independent of boundary conditions in the thermodynamic limit. Our finding thus enables direct experimental measurement and numerical calculation of the many-body quantum metric. On the other hand, for three-dimensional Coulomb systems, we show that the quantum weight is distinct from the many-body quantum metric due to dielectric screening in three dimensions. We further use dielectric sum rules to derive upper and lower bounds on the quantum weight of real materials in terms of their electron density, static dielectric constant, and plasmon energy. Our work highlights quantum weight as a fundamental material parameter, which can be experimentally determined by x-ray scattering or electron-loss spectroscopy.
We study the effect of quantum geometry on the many-body ground state of one-dimensional interacting bosonic systems. We find that the Drude weight is given by the sum of the kinetic energy and a term proportional to the many-body quantum metric of the ground state. Notably, the many-body quantum metric determines the upper bound of the Drude weight. We validate our results on the Creutz ladder, a flat-band model, using exact diagonalization at half and unit densities. Our work sheds light on the importance of the many-body quantum geometry in one-dimensional interacting bosonic systems.
Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture. Amelia Earhart Summary Correlation functions provide a direct way to characterize and analyze many-body systems, both theoretically and experimentally. In this chapter we review the properties of one- and two-body correlation functions in quantum systems, with emphasis on several key quantities: static density correlations that determine the energy and thermodynamic potentials, dynamic correlation functions such as response functions that describe excitations of the system, and Green's functions that are basic tools in the theory of interacting many-body systems. Correlation functions are central quantities in the description of interacting many-body systems, both in the theoretical formulation and in the analysis of experiments. In contrast to single numbers like the total energy, correlation functions reveal far more information about the electrons, how they arrange themselves, and the spectra of their excitations. In contrast to the many-body wavefunctions that contain all the information on the system, correlation functions extract the information most directly relevant to experimentally measurable properties. Dynamic current–current correlation functions are sufficient to determine the electrical and optical properties: one-body Green's functions describe the spectra of excitations when one electron is added to or removed from the system, static and dynamic correlations are measured using scattering techniques, and so forth. In this chapter we present the basic definitions and properties of correlation functions and Green's functions that are the basis for much of the developments in the following chapters. In general, a correlation function quantifies the correlation between two or more quantities at different points in space r , time t , or spin σ . Very often the correlation function can be specified as a function of the Fourier-transformed variables, momentum (wavevector) k , and frequency ω . It is useful to distinguish between a dynamic correlation function which describes the correlation between events at different times and a static or equal-time correlation function, by which we mean that of a property measured or computed with “snapshots” of the system. Also, the different correlation functions can be classified by the number of particles and/or fields involved.
Quantum geometry underlies many fundamental properties of materials, but it has remained largely inaccessible to direct experiment. Here we demonstrate that inelastic x-ray scattering (IXS) provides a direct, quantitative probe of quantum geometry and quantum information in solids. Studying two prototype insulators, covalently bonded diamond and ionically bonded LiF, we measure the density response and experimentally determine the quantum Fisher information, the associated Bures metric, and the electron localization length. These measurements enable a quantitative comparison of quantum geometry for two distinct bonding environments. We find that the dimensionless quantum weight, aK(q), which quantifies the longitudinal localization of quantum information, is constrained by fundamental electrostatic bounds in both materials. Crucially, the quantum weight of diamond exceeds that of LiF, indicating that covalent bonds exhibit a higher degree of delocalization and higher density of quantum information than the ionic bonds. Our results establish a direct experimental relationship between quantum information, electron localization, and chemical bonding, and identify IXS as a powerful tool for measuring quantum geometry in materials.
Interfacing materials with electromagnetic cavities offers a route to modify equilibrium properties through structured vacuum fluctuations. The coupling between light and correlated electrons lacks a characteristic energy scale, making vacuum induced ground state modifications of such systems inherently off-resonant and sensitive to the full photon mode structure. We develop a consistent cavity-QED formalism for dispersive electromagnetic environments in the Coulomb gauge, capturing both dynamical dressing via the vector potential and static screening by the dielectric. With this formalism, we perform a non-perturbative study of the cavity-induced modification of magnetism in the Hubbard model close to half-filling, including all cavity modes and with parameters determined from first principles. At half-filling, we show that the modification of the magnetic exchange interaction J is controlled by a generalized Purcell factor, proportional to the frequency integrated photonic density of states relative to free space. This result identifies polaritonic surface cavities as promising platforms to modify correlated systems. For the surface cavity a competition between static screening and dynamical dressing via the vector potential leads to a net enhancement of J, directly observable in two-magnon Raman spectroscopy. The inclusion of screening is essential to obtain even qualitatively correct results. At weak doping, a variational exact diagonalization of the cavity-coupled t-J polaron reveals that a low-frequency surface cavity can reverse the nodal-antinodal dichotomy of the bare polaron dispersion. This effect lies beyond mean field theory and is observable via ARPES measurements. Our framework establishes a concrete design principle linking cavity geometry to material response in the off-resonant regime, which will guide future experimental and theoretical explorations.
The quantum adiabatic theorem is fundamental to time-dependent quantum systems, but being able to characterize quantitatively an adiabatic evolution in many-body systems can be a challenge. This work demonstrates that the use of appropriate state and particle-density metrics is a viable method to quantitatively determine the degree of adiabaticity in the dynamic of a quantum many-body system. The method applies also to systems at finite temperature, which is important for quantum technologies and quantum thermodynamics related protocols. The importance of accounting for memory effects is discussed via comparison to results obtained by extending the quantum adiabatic criterion to finite temperatures: it is shown that this may produce false readings being quasi-Markovian by construction. As the proposed method makes it possible to characterize the degree of adiabatic evolution by tracking only the system local particle densities, it is potentially applicable to both theoretical calculations of very large many-body systems and to experiments.
Quantum coherence is a fundamental common trait of quantum phenomena, from the interference of matter waves to quantum degeneracy of identical particles. Despite its importance, estimating and measuring quantum coherence in generic, mixed many-body quantum states remains a formidable challenge, with fundamental implications in areas as broad as quantum condensed matter, quantum information, quantum metrology, and quantum biology. Here, we provide a quantitative definition of the variance of quantum coherent fluctuations (the quantum variance) of any observable on generic quantum states. The quantum variance generalizes the concept of thermal de Broglie wavelength (for the position of a free quantum particle) to the space of eigenvalues of any observable, quantifying the degree of coherent delocalization in that space. The quantum variance is generically measurable and computable as the difference between the static fluctuations and the static susceptibility of the observable; despite its simplicity, it is found to provide a tight lower bound to most widely accepted estimators of ``quantumness'' of observables (both as a feature as well as a resource), such as the Wigner-Yanase skew information and the quantum Fisher information. When considering bipartite fluctuations in an extended quantum system, the quantum variance expresses genuine quantum correlations among the two parts. In the case of many-body systems, it is found to obey an area law at finite temperature, extending therefore area laws of entanglement and quantum fluctuations of pure states to the mixed-state context. Hence the quantum variance paves the way to the measurement of macroscopic quantum coherence and quantum correlations in most complex quantum systems.