Linear response function of a many-fermion system

C. Toepffer, P.‐G. Reinhard

K. Gütter, P.‐G. Reinhard, K. Wagner +1 more

Hadi Cheraghi, Ali G. Moghaddam, Teemu Ojanen

We propose a general connection between entanglement-entropy scaling laws and the linear response functions of particle-conserving fermionic systems in their ground state. Specifically, we show that the response to perturbations coupled to the particle number within a finite region exhibits the same size scaling as the entanglement entropy of that region. We explicitly verify this scaling in free-fermion systems that display area-law, volume-law, and critical forms of entanglement. The resulting entanglement-governed scaling of response functions leads to unexpected physical consequences. For instance, contrary to conventional expectations, the energy absorption rate and particle-number fluctuations in gapped systems scale with the boundary of the perturbed region rather than with its volume. Our work thus establishes a direct link between linear-response properties and many-body entanglement.

Arnold J. Glick

Efekan Kökcü, Heba A. Labib, James K. Freericks +1 more

Response functions are a fundamental aspect of physics; they represent the link between experimental observations and the underlying quantum many-body state. However, this link is often under-appreciated, as the Lehmann formalism for obtaining response functions in linear response has no direct link to experiment. Within the context of quantum computing, and by using a linear response framework, we restore this link by making the experiment an inextricable part of the quantum simulation. This method can be frequency- and momentum-selective, avoids limitations on operators that can be directly measured, and is ancilla-free. As prototypical examples of response functions, we demonstrate that both bosonic and fermionic Green's functions can be obtained, and apply these ideas to the study of a charge-density-wave material on ibm_auckland. The linear response method provides a robust framework for using quantum computers to study systems in physics and chemistry. It also provides new paradigms for computing response functions on classical computers.