Symmetries are important for understanding equilibrium as well as nonequilibrium properties like transport. In translationally invariant extended systems one might expect symmetry generators to also be homogeneous. Studying qubit circuits with nearest-neighbor U(1) gates we show that this needs not be the case. We find new inhomogeneous screw SU(2) and $${{{{\rm{U}}}}}_{q}({{\mathfrak{sl}}}_{2})$$ symmetries whose generators exhibit a spatial quasi-momentum modulation. They can be viewed as a parameter-dependent generalization of the standard rotational symmetry of the Heisenberg model and can be identified by the Ruelle-Pollicott spectrum of a momentum-resolved propagator. Rich integrability structure is reflected also in transport: picking an arbitrary U(1) gate and varying the gate duration one will transition through different phases, including fractal ballistic transport, Kardar-Parisi-Zhang superdiffusion at the critical manifold that also contains helix states, diffusion, and localization. To correctly explain transport the non-local SU(2) symmetries do not matter, while the inhomogeneous local ones that almost commute with the propagator do. Symmetries play a vital role in many-body physics, and in homogeneous systems one expects symmetries that are translationally invariant. Here, by studying magnetization conserving integrable quantum circuits, researchers find new spatially modulated symmetries that have consequences for quantum transport.
Symmetries are important for understanding equilibrium as well as nonequilibrium properties like transport. In translationally invariant extended systems one might expect symmetry generators to also be homogeneous. Studying qubit circuits with nearest-neighbor U(1) gates we show that this needs not be the case. We find new inhomogeneous screw SU(2) and Uq(sl2) symmetries whose generators exhibit a spatial quasi-momentum modulation. They can be viewed as a parameter-dependent generalization of the standard rotational symmetry of the Heisenberg model and can be identified by the Ruelle-Pollicott spectrum of a momentum-resolved propagator. Rich integrability structure is reflected also in transport: picking an arbitrary U(1) gate and varying the gate duration one will transition through different phases, including fractal ballistic transport, Kardar-Parisi-Zhang superdiffusion at the critical manifold that also contains helix states, diffusion, and localization. To correctly explain transport the non-local SU(2) symmetries do not matter, while the inhomogeneous local ones that almost commute with the propagator do. Symmetries play a vital role in many-body physics, and in homogeneous systems one expects symmetries that are translationally invariant. Here, by studying magnetization conserving integrable quantum circuits, researchers find new spatially modulated symmetries that have consequences for quantum transport.
Integrability is an exceptional property believed to hold only for systems with fine-tuned parameters. Contrary, we explicitly show that in homogeneous nearest-neighbor qubit circuits with a U(1) symmetry, i.e., circuits that repeatedly apply the same magnetization-conserving two-qubit gate, this is not the case. There, integrability is generic: All such brickwall qubit circuits are integrable, even with a randomly selected gate. We identify two phases with different conservation laws, transport properties, and strong zero edge modes. Experimentally important is the fact that varying any one of the parameters in the generic U(1) gate, one will typically cross the critical manifold that separates the two phases. Finally, we report on an unconventional time-reversal symmetry causing the system with open boundary conditions to be in the orthogonal class, while the one with periodic boundary conditions is in the unitary class.
High-temperature spin transport in integrable quantum spin chains exhibits a rich dynamical phase diagram, including ballistic, superdiffusive, and diffusive regimes. While integrability is known to survive in static and periodically driven systems, its fate in the complete absence of time-translation symmetry, particularly in interacting random quantum circuits, has remained unclear. Here we construct integrable random quantum circuits built from inhomogeneous XXZ R-matrices. Remarkably, integrability is preserved for arbitrary sequences of gate layers, ranging from quasiperiodic to fully random, thereby explicitly breaking both continuous and discrete time-translation symmetry. Using large-scale time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group simulations at infinite temperature and half filling, we map out the resulting spin-transport phase diagram and identify ballistic, superdiffusive, and diffusive regimes controlled by the spectral parameters of the R-matrices. The spatiotemporal structure of spin correlations within each regime depends sensitively on the inhomogeneity, exhibiting spatial asymmetry and sharp peak structures tied to near-degenerate quasiparticle velocities. To account for these findings, we develop a generalized hydrodynamics framework adapted to time-dependent integrable circuits, yielding Euler-scale predictions for correlation functions, Drude weights, and diffusion bounds. This approach identifies the quasiparticles governing transport and quantitatively captures both the scaling exponents and fine structures of the correlation profiles observed numerically. Our results demonstrate that exact Yang-Baxter integrability is compatible with stochastic quantum dynamics and establish generalized hydrodynamics as a predictive framework for transport in time-dependent integrable systems.
Introducing a class of SU(2) invariant quantum unitary circuits generating chiral transport, we examine the role of broken space-reflection and time-reversal symmetries on spin-transport properties. Upon adjusting parameters of local unitary gates, the dynamics can be either chaotic or integrable. The latter corresponds to a generalization of the space-time discretized (Trotterized) higher-spin quantum Heisenberg chain. We demonstrate that breaking of space-reflection symmetry results in a drift in the dynamical spin susceptibility. Remarkably, we find a universal drift velocity given by a simple formula, which, at zero average magnetization, depends only on the values of SU(2) Casimir invariants associated with local spins. In the integrable case, the drift velocity formula is confirmed analytically based on the exact solution of thermodynamic Bethe ansatz equations. Finally, by inspecting the large fluctuations of the time-integrated current between two halves of the system in stationary maximum-entropy states, we demonstrate violation of the Gallavotti-Cohen symmetry, implying that such states cannot be regarded as equilibrium ones. We show that the scaled cumulant generating function of the time-integrated current instead obeys a generalized fluctuation relation. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We study Ruelle-Pollicott resonances of translationally invariant magnetization-conserving qubit circuits via the spectrum of the quasi-momentum-resolved truncated propagator of extensive observables. Diffusive transport of the conserved magnetization is reflected in the Gaussian quasi-momentum k k dependence of the leading eigenvalue (Ruelle-Pollicott resonance) of the truncated propagator for small k k . This, in particular, allows us to extract the diffusion constant. For large k k , the leading Ruelle-Pollicott resonance is not related to transport and governs the exponential decay of correlation functions. Additionally, we conjecture the existence of a continuum of eigenvalues below the leading diffusive resonance, which governs non-exponential decay, for instance, power-law hydrodynamic tails. We expect our conclusions to hold for generic systems with exactly one U(1) conserved quantity.
Local symmetric quantum circuits are those that contain only local unitaries that respect a certain symmetry. These circuits provide a simple framework to study the dynamics and phases of complex quantum systems with conserved charges; however, some of their basic properties have not yet been understood. Recently, it has been shown that such quantum circuits only generate a restricted subset of symmetric unitary transformations. In this paper, we consider circuits with 2-local SU(d)-invariant unitaries acting on qudits, i.e., d-dimensional quantum systems. Our results reveal a significant distinction between the cases of d=2 and d>=3. For qubits with SU(2) symmetry, arbitrary global rotationally-invariant unitaries can be generated with 2-local ones, up to relative phases between the subspaces corresponding to inequivalent irreducible representations (irreps) of the symmetry, i.e., sectors with different angular momenta. On the other hand, for d>=3, in addition to similar constraints on relative phases between the irreps, locality also restricts the generated unitaries inside these conserved subspaces. In particular, for certain irreps of SU(d), the dynamics under 2-local SU(d)-invariant unitaries can be mapped to the dynamics of a non-interacting (free) fermionic system, whereas for general 3-local ones, the corresponding fermionic model is interacting. Using this correspondence, we obtain new conservation laws for dynamics under 2-local SU(d)-invariant unitaries. Furthermore, we identify a Z2 symmetry related to the parity of permutations which imposes additional conservation laws for systems with n =3. Our results imply that the distribution of unitaries generated by random 2-local SU(d)-invariant unitaries does not converge to the Haar measure over the group of all SU(d)-invariant unitaries, and in fact, for d>=3, is not even a 2-design for the Haar distribution.
The Heisenberg spin chain is a canonical integrable model. As such, it features stable ballistically propagating quasiparticles, but spin transport is subballistic at any nonzero temperature: An initially localized spin fluctuation spreads in time t to a width t2/3. This exponent as well as the functional form of the dynamical spin correlation function suggest that spin transport is in the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang (KPZ) universality class. However, the full counting statistics of magnetization is manifestly incompatible with KPZ scaling. A simple two-mode hydrodynamic description, derivable from microscopic principles, captures both the KPZ scaling of the correlation function and the coarse features of the full counting statistics, but remains to be numerically validated. These results generalize to any integrable spin chain invariant under a continuous nonabelian symmetry and are surprisingly robust against moderately strong integrability-breaking perturbations that respect the nonabelian symmetry.