Abstract The emergence of diffusion is one of the deepest physical phenomena observed in many-body interacting, chaotic systems. But establishing rigorously that correlation functions, say of the spin, expand diffusively, remains one of the most important problems of mathematical physics. We establish for the first time, with Lindbladian evolution, a lower bound on spin diffusion in chaotic, translation-invariant, nearest-neighbor open quantum spin-1/2 chain satisfying a local unitality condition and strong conservation of magnetization. The bound is strictly positive if and only if the local quantum jumps transport spin. Physically, the bound comes from the spreading effects of initial-state macroscopic fluctuations, a mechanism which occurs whenever spin is an interacting ballistic mode. Chaoticity means that the Hilbert space of extensive charges is spanned by magnetization; we expect this to be generic. Our main tool is the Green-Kubo formula, the mathematical technique of projection over quadratically extensive charges, and appropriate correlation decay bounds recently established. Because Lindbladian dynamics is not reversible, the Green-Kubo spin diffusion strength includes a contribution due to irreversibility, which we interpret as encoding the hydrodynamic entropy production that may occur in the forgotten environment. This, we show, vanishes for certain choices of interaction parameters, for which the Lindbladian dynamics becomes reversible. Our methods can be extended to finite or short ranges, higher spins, and other non-Hamiltonian systems such as quantum circuits. As we argue, according to the theory of nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics, we further expect these systems to display superdiffusion, and thus have infinite diffusivity; however this appears to still be beyond the reach of mathematical rigor.
Abstract The emergence of diffusion is one of the deepest physical phenomena observed in many-body interacting, chaotic systems. But establishing rigorously that correlation functions, say of the spin, expand diffusively, remains one of the most important problems of mathematical physics. We establish for the first time, with Lindbladian evolution, a lower bound on spin diffusion in chaotic, translation-invariant, nearest-neighbor open quantum spin-1/2 chain satisfying a local unitality condition and strong conservation of magnetization. The bound is strictly positive if and only if the local quantum jumps transport spin. Physically, the bound comes from the spreading effects of initial-state macroscopic fluctuations, a mechanism which occurs whenever spin is an interacting ballistic mode. Chaoticity means that the Hilbert space of extensive charges is spanned by magnetization; we expect this to be generic. Our main tool is the Green-Kubo formula, the mathematical technique of projection over quadratically extensive charges, and appropriate correlation decay bounds recently established. Because Lindbladian dynamics is not reversible, the Green-Kubo spin diffusion strength includes a contribution due to irreversibility, which we interpret as encoding the hydrodynamic entropy production that may occur in the forgotten environment. This, we show, vanishes for certain choices of interaction parameters, for which the Lindbladian dynamics becomes reversible. Our methods can be extended to finite or short ranges, higher spins, and other non-Hamiltonian systems such as quantum circuits. As we argue, according to the theory of nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics, we further expect these systems to display superdiffusion, and thus have infinite diffusivity; however this appears to still be beyond the reach of mathematical rigor.
This Ph.D. thesis reports on progress in rigorously establishing hydrodynamic principles from the microscopic Hamiltonian dynamics of quantum many-body systems in a general, non-model-specific manner. Using the C*-algebra framework of statistical mechanics, we treat systems directly in the thermodynamic limit, primarily focusing on quantum lattice models where tools such as Lieb-Robinson bounds yield rigorous statements. We thus provide a proof-of-principle that large-scale behaviours can indeed be seen as emerging from microscopic dynamics, with mathematical proof. We first report on ergodicity results in short-range models with exponentially decaying or finite-range interactions. We show that time-averaged observables converge to their ensemble averages and decorrelate from all other observables almost everywhere within the light-cone defined by Lieb-Robinson bounds. This relaxation property indicates the loss of information at large scales, from which we prove a Boltzmann-Gibbs principle: at the Euler scaling limit of large time and distance, observables project onto hydrodynamic modes (extensive conserved quantities), within correlation functions. These results hold independently of microscopic details, capturing the physical idea that such details are lost at large space-time scales. Regarding finer scales of hydrodynamics, we discuss rigorous lower bounds on the strength of diffusion. We establish a general result on the clustering of n-th order connected correlations within C* dynamical systems. These results are applied to obtain a strictly positive lower bound on the diffusion constant of chaotic open quantum spin chains with nearest-neighbor interactions. This thesis underlines the universality of hydrodynamic principles, provides a framework for establishing them rigorously, and sets the stage for future progress toward the goal of proving the hydrodynamic equations.
In the hydrodynamic theory, the nonequilibrium dynamics of a many-body system is approximated, at large scales of space and time, by irreversible relaxation to local entropy maximization. This results in a convective equation corrected by viscous or diffusive terms in a gradient expansion, such as the Navier-Stokes equations. Diffusive terms are evaluated using the Kubo formula, and possibly arising from an emergent noise due to discarded microscopic degrees of freedom. In one dimension of space, diffusive scaling is often broken as noise leads to superdiffusion. But in linearly degenerate hydrodynamics, such as that of integrable models, diffusive behaviors are observed, and it has long been thought that the standard diffusive picture remains valid. In this Letter, we show that in such systems, the Navier-Stokes equation breaks down beyond linear response. We demonstrate that diffusive-order corrections do not take the form of a gradient expansion. Instead, they are completely determined by ballistic transport of initial-state fluctuations, and obtained from the nonlocal two-point correlations recently predicted by the ballistic macroscopic fluctuation theory; the resulting hydrodynamic equations are reversible. To do so, we establish a regularized fluctuation theory, putting on a firm basis the recent idea that ballistic transport of initial-state fluctuations determines fluctuations and correlations beyond the Euler scale. This extends the idea of "diffusion from convection" previously developed to explain the Kubo formula in integrable systems to generic nonequilibrium settings.
Hydrodynamic noise is the Gaussian process that emerges at larges scales of space and time in many-body systems. It is justified by the central limit theorem, and represents degrees of freedom forgotten when projecting coarse-grained observables onto conserved quantities. It is the basis for fluctuating hydrodynamics, where it appears along with ‘’bare’’ diffusion terms via the Einstein relation. In one dimension of space, nonlinearities may modify the corrections to ballistic behaviours by superdiffusive effects. But in systems where no shocks appear, such as linearly degenerate and integrable systems, it turns out that the diffusive scaling stays intact. Nevertheless, anomalies remain. We show that in such systems, the noise covariance is given by a modification of the Kubo formula, where effects of ballistic long-range correlations – quadratic charges – have been projected out. We further show that nonlinearities are tamed by a point-splitting regularisation. We then obtain a well-defined hydrodynamic fluctuation theory in the ballistic scaling of space-time, as a stochastic PDE. It describes the asymptotic expansion in the inverse variation scale of connected correlation functions, self-consistently organised via a cumulant expansion. The resulting anomalous hydrodynamic equation takes into account both long-range correlations and bare diffusion, generalising recent works. Despite these anomalies, two-point functions satisfy an ordinary diffusion equation, with a normal Kubo formula. In integrable systems, we show that hydrodynamic noise, hence bare diffusion, must vanish, as was conjectured recently, and argue that under an appropriate gauge, this is true at all orders. Thus initial-state fluctuations do not affect coarse-grained currents, and the Ballistic Macroscopic Fluctuation Theory give the all-order hydrodynamic theory for integrable models.
Hydrodynamic projections, the projection onto conserved charges representing ballistic propagation of fluid waves, give exact transport results in many-body systems, such as the exact Drude weights. Focussing one one-dimensional systems, I show that this principle can be extended beyond the Euler scale, in particular to the diffusive and superdiffusive scales. By hydrodynamic reduction, Hilbert spaces of observables are constructed that generalise the standard space of conserved densities and describe the finer scales of hydrodynamics. The Green-Kubo formula for the Onsager matrix has a natural expression within the diffusive space. This space is associated with quadratically extensive charges, and projections onto any such charge give generic lower bounds for diffusion. In particular, bilinear expressions in linearly extensive charges lead to explicit diffusion lower bounds calculable from the thermodynamics, and applicable for instance to generic momentum-conserving one-dimensional systems. Bilinear charges are interpreted as covariant derivatives on the manifold of maximal entropy states, and represent the contribution to diffusion from scattering of ballistic waves. An analysis of fractionally extensive charges, combined with clustering properties from the superdiffusion phenomenology, gives lower bounds for superdiffusion exponents. These bounds reproduce the predictions of nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics, including the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang exponent 2/3 for sound-like modes, the Levy-distribution exponent 3/5 for heat-like modes, and the full Fibonacci sequence.
We extend beyond the Euler scales the hydrodynamic theory for quantum and classical integrable models developed in recent years, accounting for diffusive dynamics and local entropy production. We review how the diffusive scale can be reached via a gradient expansion of the expectation values of the conserved fields and how the coefficients of the expansion can be computed via integrated steady-state two-point correlation functions, emphasising that {\mathcal PT} 𝒫 T -symmetry can fully fix the inherent ambiguity in the definition of conserved fields at the diffusive scale. We develop a form factor expansion to compute such correlation functions and we show that, while the dynamics at the Euler scale is completely determined by the density of single quasiparticle excitations on top of the local steady state, diffusion is due to scattering processes among quasiparticles, which are only present in truly interacting systems. We then show that only two-quasiparticle scattering processes contribute to the diffusive dynamics. Finally we employ the theory to compute the exact spin diffusion constant of a gapped XXZ spin -1/2 − 1 / 2 chain at finite temperature and half-filling, where we show that spin transport is purely diffusive.
Connecting short-time microscopic dynamics with long-time hydrodynamics in strongly correlated quantum systems is one of the outstanding questions. In particular, it is hard to determine various hydrodynamic coefficients such as the diffusion constant or viscosity starting from a microscopic model: exact quantum simulations are limited to either small system sizes or to short times, which are insufficient to reach asymptotic behavior and so various approximations must be applied. We show that these difficulties, at least for particular models, can be circumvented by using the cluster truncated Wigner approximation (CTWA), which maps quantum Hamiltonian dynamics into classical Hamiltonian dynamics in auxiliary high-dimensional phase space. We apply CTWA to XXZ next-nearest-neighbor spin-1/2 chains and XY spin ladders, and find behavior consisting of short-time spin relaxation which gradually crosses over to emergent diffusive behavior at long times. For a random initial state, we show that CTWA correctly reproduces the whole spin spectral function. Necessary in this construction is sampling from properly fluctuating initial conditions: the Dirac mean-field (variational) ansatz, which neglects such fluctuations, leads to incorrect predictions.