The recent advance of techniques in controlling ultra-cold gases in optical lattice provides a ideal experimental platform to study quantum many-body physics. The almost isolated and highly tunable systems created in these experimental setups are perfect for studying coherent time evolution of closed quantum many-body systems. In this thesis I present an analytical approach on the time evolution of the anisotropic Heisenberg spin chain (XXZ model), which is a fundamental model but has rich dynamics. This approach is developed through generalizing the Yudson contour representation. With this approach I obtain the exact time-dependent wave functions after a quantum quench in an integral form for generic initial states and for any anisotropy ∆. I reformulate the integrals and show their physical interpretation as propagating magnons and their bound states, which were predicted by the “string” solutions of Bethe Ansatz equations. To apply the new approach to specific problems, I calculate the quench dynamics of various observables from some particular initial states: starting from a local N ́eel state I calculate the time evolution of the antiferromagnetic order parameter–staggered magnetization; starting from a state with consecutive flipped spins I calculate the evolution of the local magnetization, and predict the evolution of the induced spin currents. These results and predictions can be confronted with recently experiments in ultra-cold gases in optical lattices, and are expected to contribute to the understanding of non-equilibrium physics of isolated many-body systems.
The recent advance of techniques in controlling ultra-cold gases in optical lattice provides a ideal experimental platform to study quantum many-body physics. The almost isolated and highly tunable systems created in these experimental setups are perfect for studying coherent time evolution of closed quantum many-body systems. In this thesis I present an analytical approach on the time evolution of the anisotropic Heisenberg spin chain (XXZ model), which is a fundamental model but has rich dynamics. This approach is developed through generalizing the Yudson contour representation. With this approach I obtain the exact time-dependent wave functions after a quantum quench in an integral form for generic initial states and for any anisotropy ∆. I reformulate the integrals and show their physical interpretation as propagating magnons and their bound states, which were predicted by the “string” solutions of Bethe Ansatz equations. To apply the new approach to specific problems, I calculate the quench dynamics of various observables from some particular initial states: starting from a local N ́eel state I calculate the time evolution of the antiferromagnetic order parameter–staggered magnetization; starting from a state with consecutive flipped spins I calculate the evolution of the local magnetization, and predict the evolution of the induced spin currents. These results and predictions can be confronted with recently experiments in ultra-cold gases in optical lattices, and are expected to contribute to the understanding of non-equilibrium physics of isolated many-body systems.
We develop an analytical approach for the study of the quench dynamics of the anisotropic Heisenberg model (XXZ model) on the infinite line. We present the exact time-dependent wave functions after a quench in an integral form for any initial state and for any anisotropy Δ by means of a generalized Yudson contour representation. We calculate the evolution of several observables from two particular initial states: starting from a local Néel state we calculate the time evolution of the antiferromagnetic order parameter-staggered magnetization; starting from a state with consecutive flipped spins (1) we calculate the evolution of the local magnetization and express it in terms of the propagation of magnons and bound state excitations, and (2) we predict the evolution of the induced spin currents. These predictions can be confronted with experiments in ultracold gases in optical lattices. We also show how the "string" solutions of Bethe ansatz equations emerge naturally from the contour approach.
Recent experimental achievements in controlling ultracold gases in optical lattices open a new perspective on quantum many-body physics. In these experimental setups, it is possible to study coherent time evolution of isolated quantum systems. These dynamics reveal new physics beyond the low-energy properties that are usually relevant in solid-state many-body systems. In this paper, we study the time evolution of antiferromagnetic order in the Heisenberg chain after a sudden change of the anisotropy parameter, using various numerical and analytical methods. As a generic result, we find that the order parameter, which can show oscillatory or non-oscillatory dynamics, decays exponentially except for the effectively non-interacting case of the XX limit. For weakly ordered initial states, we also find evidence for an algebraic correction to the exponential law. The study is based on numerical simulations using a numerical matrix product method for infinite system sizes (iMPS), for which we provide a detailed description and an error analysis. Additionally, we investigate in detail the exactly solvable XX limit. These results are compared to approximative analytical approaches including an effective description by the XZ model as well as by mean-field, Luttinger-liquid and sine-Gordon theories. The comparison reveals which aspects of non-equilibrium dynamics can, as in equilibrium, be described by low-energy theories and which are the novel phenomena specific to quantum quench dynamics. The relevance of the energetically high part of the spectrum is illustrated by means of a full numerical diagonalization of the Hamiltonian.
The study of quantum dynamics is an increasingly important aspect of atomic, molecular and optical physics, as well as condensed-matter physics and other disciplines. It is essential in order to understand non-equilibrium phenomena which do not fit within the framework of equilibrium thermodynamics, such as many-body localization, dynamical quantum phase transitions, and non-equilibrium steady states in driven-dissipative systems. However, the exact calculation of dynamical observables is extremely difficult in general for several reasons, which makes it challenging for theoretical predictions and analyses to keep pace with rapidly advancing experiments. In this thesis I use and develop several computational methods to investigate the dynamics of quantum many-body systems, with the two goals of better understanding the evolution of local observables and correlation functions in spin and Fermion systems as well as creating and testing more effective numerical methods for solving quantum dynamics problems. I explore quantum dynamics by using Hamiltonian parameter quenches in several commonly-used models in AMO physics and elsewhere: the Fermi-Hubbard model, the XXZ model, and the transverse-Ising model. The first represents a system of short-range interacting Fermions, while the latter two represent spin systems with different spin-spin couplings and magnetic field terms. All of these models can be realized in current experiments. First, I derive an exact solution for an extreme interaction quench in the Fermi-Hubbard model, from a strongly-interacting initial state to a noninteracting final Hamiltonian. From this result I show that there are nontrivial transient connected correlations, despite the fact that the system has very high temperature and a noninteracting Hamiltonian. Those features would suppress such correlations in equilibrium, but the dynamical correlations are still significant. Then, I develop and examine two numerical methods for solving dynamics of the spin expectation values and correlation functions in the transverse-Ising and XXZ models. Both methods rely on approximating a thermodynamically large system with a much smaller and more computationally tractable cluster of lattice sites, or a series of clusters. The first method is a dynamical numerical linked cluster expansion (NLCE). NLCEs have already been used successfully on systems in thermodynamic equilibrium, and I extended the technique to directly compute the dynamics of an observable after a quantum quench. I review the general NLCE method, describe my dynamical variant of it, and compute the quench dynamics of spin and correlation observables in the transverse-Ising and XXZ models. The second method, which I term the adaptive-boundary cluster method, relies on recently refined bounds on information propagation in quantum systems to choose a cluster of lattice sites that minimizes the finite size error bound of a dynamical computation. I briefly review these bounds, and describe a new algorithm which uses them to construct a cluster whose boundary is chosen according to a related error estimate. Such an adaptive-boundary cluster has the property that there exists a computable upper bound on the finite size error of observables measured at the cluster center, and this error bound is nearly minimal when compared to that of other clusters of the same size. I then compute the quench dynamics of spin and correlation observables in the transverse-Ising model using the adaptive boundary clusters. I apply this method to both uniform and strongly disordered systems. To evaluate the effectiveness of both dynamical NLCE and adaptive-boundary clusters, I compare the results obtained using them to results from a standard and general purpose numerical method: exact solvers applied a rectangular cluster with periodic boundary conditions. Both of the new methods usually converge faster and are more accurate than the standard method for comparable cluster sizes. This thesis illustrates that choosing numerical methods which take advantage of the geometric and entanglement structure of the initial state and Hamiltonian can substantially enhance our ability to study quantum dynamics, by reducing the computational cost of numerically exact solutions. I conclude with a discussion of various avenues for future research to build on this work.
The primary goals of this dissertaion are to describe and elucidate a new formalism to study the out of equilibrium dynamics of integrable models, and to apply this formalism to some specific problems. In particular, I describe the “quench dynamics” of a gas of interacting bosons in one dimension, and provide details of some preliminary work on the isotropic Heisenberg chain. The formalism, based on earlier work by Yudson, provides a way of getting around some of the difficulties involved in calculating the time evolution of arbitrary initial states evolved with integrable Hamiltonians. In addition to this, I aim to discuss some of the general aspects of quench dynamics in quantum systems. The description of the nonequilibrium dynamics of a given system depends significantly on initial states, and the time scales at which the system is probed compared with the various inherent time scales in the system. I present the experimental context and motivation for these studies, and survey the existing techniques and efforts at understanding the relaxation of systems that are far from their equilibrium states or ground states.
This thesis studies the quench dynamics of strongly correlated quantum systems described by one dimensional integrable Hamiltonians. We develop the Yudson approach for such systems in terms of contour integrals allowing the expansion of arbitrary states in terms of the Bethe Ansatz eigenstates which in turn provides the means to calculate the time evolution of such observables as densities or noise correlations from any initial states. As a motivation to the present work, I present the state of art ultracold atom techniques and fundamental questions related to the quench dynamics. Then various Bethe ansatz solutions are discussed. This is followed by an introduction to the Yudson approach where advantages and difficulties are listed. As applications of the Yudson approach, I studied the nonequilibrium dynamics of the Lieb-Liniger model,(bosonic) Gaudin-Yang model, quenched from a Mott state with a super fluid Hamiltonian. Integration contours are specified for various models and different interactions. It is shown that the Yudson approach incorporates all free states and bound states into the contour, separating them apart sheds light on the validity of the String hypothesis. The result is affirmative for Lieb-Linger model, but not for the Gaudin-Yang model. Our calculations for the density and correlation shows that for interacting system, if the pre-quench state has negligible overlap among the particles, the system retains this feature after the quench. Particularly, normalized noise function c(z; -z) at the origin shows different stages. Shortly after the quench, the sign are different for attractive and repulsive interaction. Then they both quickly approaches the value where possibility to find both particles equals zero. Then the value increases gradually for attractive models, while c(0; 0) remains small for repulsive systems.
We consider the nonequilibrium evolution in the spin-1/2 XXZ Heisenberg chain for fixed magnetization after a local quantum quench. This model is equivalent to interacting spinless fermions. Initially an infinite magnetic field is applied to n consecutive sites and the ground state is calculated. At time t=0 the field is switched off and the time evolution of observables such as the z component of spin is computed using the time evolving block decimation algorithm. We find that the observables exhibit strong signatures of linearly propagating spinon and bound state excitations. These persist even when integrability-breaking perturbations are included. Since bound states ("strings") are notoriously difficult to observe using conventional probes such as inelastic neutron scattering, we conclude that local quantum quenches are an ideal setting for studying their properties. We comment on implications of our results for cold atom experiments.