Phase transitions occur when a macroscopic number of local degrees of freedom coherently change their behavior. In ground states of quantum many-body systems, phase transitions due to quantum fluctuations are observed as non-analytic behaviors of order parameters, such as magnetization, as functions of a conjugate parameter, such as the magnetic field. However, as soon as thermal fluctuations are present, these effects are believed to disappear for local observables. We show that this is not necessarily the case: order parameters may still show non-analytic behaviors within their dynamics. With the example of the Ising model and using methods based on hydrodynamic fluctuations, we evaluate the exact order-parameter correlation time, in space-time directions of all velocities, in equilibrium states at nonzero temperature. We reveal non-analytic behaviors of spin correlation times as functions of the magnetic field, velocity, and temperature. As a function of the magnetic field, they occur at values that continuously approach that of the zero-temperature equilibrium transition point as the velocity is decreased and reach it within the light cone, where we obtain a new, temperature-independent logarithmic divergence characterizing the collective dynamics. Thus, collective effects induced by quantum fluctuations persist within the dynamics of local observables.
We study the non-equilibrium phase diagram and the dynamical phase transitions occurring during the pre-thermalization of non-integrable quantum spin chains, subject to either quantum quenches or linear ramps of a relevant control parameter. We consider spin systems in which long-range ferromagnetic interactions compete with short-range, integrability-breaking terms. We capture the pre-thermal stages of the non-equilibrium evolution via a time-dependent spin wave expansion at leading order in the spin waves density. In order to access regimes with strong integrability breaking, instead, we perform numerical simulations based on the time-dependent variational principle with matrix product states. By investigating a large class of quantum spin models, we demonstrate that non-equilibrium fluctuations can significantly affect the dynamics near critical points of the phase diagram, resulting in a chaotic evolution of the collective order parameter, akin to the dynamics of a classical particle in a multiple-well potential subject to quantum friction. We also elucidate the signature of this novel dynamical phase on the time-dependent correlation functions of the local order parameter. We finally establish a connection with the notion of dynamical quantum phase transition associated with a possible non-analytic behavior of the return probability amplitude, or Loschmidt echo, showing that the latter displays cusps whenever the order parameter vanishes during its real-time evolution.
Quantum phase transitions occur at zero temperature driven by quantum fluctuations instead of thermal fluctuations. They take place due to competing ground state phases that are accessible for different values of certain non-thermal parameters such as coupling constants, pressure or magnetic field. The chapter starts with a discussion of the main phenomenological features of this class of non-thermal transitions. In particular, it is argued that traces of these transitions can be detected at finite (but low) temperature. Then, examples of materials that show this behaviour are provided. Finally, the quantum Ising model is discussed and it is shown that a quantum model in d dimensions can be mapped to a classical model in d+1 dimensions.
One of the distinguishing achievements of physics has been the ability to describe the Universe based upon underlying microscopic principles. When there are many participating objects being governed by these microscopic principles, the resultant behavior often harbors emergent collective phenomena that may not be obviously related to the microscopic description. Phase transitions, quantum or classical, are a canonical example of such many-body phenomena that are understood in equilibrium through a framework of thermodynamic constraints, statistical ensembles, and a growth of system-wide correlations at the transition. However, a new class of quantum phase transitions has recently emerged for non-equilibrium systems with behavior that is not captured by this traditional framework. In the case of isolated quantum systems, these transitions occur among excited eigenstates and requires knowledge of the structure of these individual eigenstates in the quantum system. Understanding what drives such a phase transition requires a deeper microscopic knowledge of the role of correlations at the transition. \nThe use of ultracold atoms in optical lattices has paved the way for faithfully realizing quantum phase transitions. In particular, the advent of the quantum gas microscope realized an experimental platform that is highly controllable and provides microscopic access to the many-bodied wave functions. All experiments presented in this thesis use such a quantum gas microscope architecture where a quantum degenerate gas of Rb is used to probe the behavior of non-equilibrium quantum systems in one spatial dimension.\nThis thesis briefly discusses some studies of entanglement in equilibrium quantum phase transitions near the ground state of the system. In the first experiment, we directly measure the second-order R\\'enyi entanglement entropy that develops as a Bose-Hubbard system transitions from a Mott insulator to a superfluid. This is followed by a study of entanglement growth at the transition in the transverse Ising model. \nThese studies progress to the investigation of two particular non-equilibrium quantum phases and their transition into one another: quantum thermalization and many-body localization. We investigate the development of entanglement entropy that mimics thermodynamic entropy for an isolated quantum system which locally thermalizes under its own unitary dynamics. We then investigate the only known robust exception to this thermalizing behavior by studying the onset of many-body localization due to disorder. We observe the breakdown of thermalization in this phase and the logarithmically slow growth of entanglement throughout the system, which identifies the localized system to be an interacting one. Lastly, we investigate the role of correlations in the critical dynamics that emerge at high-orders where the system transitions from thermalizing behavior to many-body localization.
Quantum phase transitions occur strictly at zero temperature and are accessed by varying a physical parameter such as a magnetic field or chemical potential. While these transitions themselves are experimentally inaccessible, the existence of a zero temperature quantum critical point has remarkable effects on the dynamical properties of interacting quantum many-body systems at finite temperatures. In this thesis, we study dynamics in four strongly interacting many-body systems near quantum critical points in the context of NMR relaxation, quantum quenches, many-body quantum chaos, and charge diffusion. In chapter 1, we begin by revisiting the issue of NMR relaxation in the quantum disordered phase of Ising spin chains. We find that the imaginary part of the spin susceptibility at low frequences is dominated by rare quantum processes which leads to an NMR relaxation rate that scales as
1/T1∼exp(−T2Δ) near the quantum critical point rather than the previously conjectured
1/T1∼exp(−TΔ). These results resolve certain discrepancies between the energy scales measured with different experimental probes in the quantum disordered paramagnetic phase of the Ising chain system
CoNb2O6. In chapter 2, we study the non-equilibrium dynamics of Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models with
q body interactions after a quantum quench, considering a quench protocol which drives the system from an initial state with long-lived quasiparticle excitations to a final state lacking any long-lived quasiparticle excitations. For
q=4, we find that the timescale for the system to locally thermalize
τeq∼kBTℏ and for
q→∞ we find that the system thermalizes instantaneously. In chapter 3, we study the real time dynamics of quantum electrodynamics in 2+1 dimensions with
Nf flavors of fermions. We focus on thermalization and the onset of many-body quantum chaos and compute the quantum Lyapunov exponent in a
Nf1 expansion. We briefly comment on chaos, locality, and gauge invariance. Finally, in Chapter 4 we consider whether the butterfly velocity - a speed at which quantum information propagates - may provide a fundamental bound on diffusion constants in dirty incoherent metals by computing the charge diffusion constant and the butterfly velocity in charge-neutral holographic matter with long wavelength ``hydrodynamic" disorder. In this limit, we find that the butterfly velocity does not set a sharp lower bound for the charge diffusion constant.
Abstract The study of the competition or coexistence of different ground states in many-body systems is an exciting and actual topic of research, both experimentally and theoretically. Quantum fluctuations of a given phase can suppress or enhance another phase depending on the nature of the coupling between the order parameters, their dynamics and the dimensionality of the system. The zero temperature phase diagrams of systems with competing scalar order parameters with quartic and bilinear coupling terms have been previously studied for the cases of a zero temperature bicritical point and of coexisting orders. In this work, we apply the Matsubara summation technique from finite temperature quantum field theory to introduce the effects of thermal fluctuations on the effective potential of these systems. This is essential to make contact with experiments. We consider two and three-dimensional materials characterized by a Lorentz invariant quantum critical theory, i.e., with dynamic critical exponent z = 1, such that time and space scale in the same way. We obtain that in both cases, thermal fluctuations lead to weak first-order temperature phase transitions, at which coexisting phases arising from quantum corrections become unstable. We show that above this critical temperature ( T c ), the system presents scaling behavior consistent with that approaching a quantum critical point. Below the transition the specific heat has a thermally activated contribution with a gap related to the size of the domains of the ordered phases. We obtain that T c decreases as a function of the distance to the zero temperature classical bicritical point (ZTCBP) in the coexistence region, implying that in our approach, the system attains the highest T c above the fine tuned value of this ZTCBP.
We study the current-carrying steady-state of a transverse field Ising chain coupled to magnetic thermal reservoirs and obtain the non-equilibrium phase diagram as a function of the magnetization potential of the reservoirs. Upon increasing the magnetization bias we observe a discontinuous jump of the magnetic order parameter that coincides with a divergence of the correlation length. For steady-states with a non-vanishing conductance, the entanglement entropy at zero temperature displays a bias dependent logarithmic correction that differs from the well-known equilibrium case. Our findings show that out-of-equilibrium conditions allow for novel critical phenomena not possible at equilibrium.