Perturbation Theory for Scattering States in One Dimension

Raghav G. Jha, Ashley Milsted, Dominik Neuenfeld +2 more

We study scattering in Ising field theory (IFT) using matrix product states and the time-dependent variational principle. IFT is a one-parameter family of strongly coupled nonintegrable quantum field theories in 1 + 1 dimensions, interpolating between massive free fermion theory and Zamolodchikov's integrable massive E 8 theory. Particles in IFT may scatter either elastically or inelastically. In the postcollision wave function, particle tracks from all final-state channels occur in superposition; processes of interest can be isolated by projecting the wave function onto definite particle sectors, or by evaluating energy density correlation functions. Using numerical simulations we determine the time delay of elastic scattering and the probability of inelastic particle production as a function of collision energy. We also study the mass and width of the lightest resonance near the E 8 point in detail. Close to both the free fermion and E 8 theories, our results for both elastic and inelastic scattering are in good agreement with expectations from form-factor perturbation theory. Using numerical computations to go beyond the regime accessible by perturbation theory, we find that the high-energy behavior of the two-to-two particle scattering probability in IFT is consistent with a conjecture of Zamolodchikov. Our results demonstrate the efficacy of tensor-network methods for simulating the real-time dynamics of strongly coupled quantum field theories in 1 + 1 dimensions.

Bernd Thaller

Francisco Marcelo Fernández

We can view equations (8.1) and (8.2) as a system of two linear equations with two unknowns c1 and c2. The determinant of such a system is the Wronskian W(u, v) = uv′ − u′v . (8.3) If W(u, v) is nonzero for some value of x, then the only solution of the system of homogeneous linear equations is c1 = c2 = 0, and the functions are linearly independent. If, on the other hand, W(u, v) is zero for all values of x, then there are solutions for nonzero values of c1 and c2, and the functions are linearly dependent.

Chandan Kumar

In a realistic treatment of a three-dimensional nonlinear optical experiment, the complete Maxwell equations in (3 + 1) space-time dimensions should be employed. It is then necessary to utilize a multi-mode Hamiltonian that correctly describes the propagating modes. There is an important difference between these experiments and traditional particle scattering. Quantum field dynamics in nonlinear media is dominated by multiple scattering, which is the reason why perturbation theory is less useful. Nevertheless, it is interesting to make a link to conventional perturbation theory. Accordingly, we start by considering a perturbative theory of propagation in a one-dimensional nonlinear optical system in a χ (3) medium. While this calculation cannot treat long interaction times, it does give a qualitative understanding of the important features. This problem is the ‘hydrogen atom’ of quantum field theory: it has fully interacting fields with exact solutions for their energy levels. This is because a photon in a waveguide is an elementary boson in one dimension. The interactions between these bosons are mediated by the Kerr effect, which in quantum field theory is a quartic potential, equivalent to a delta-function interaction. The quantum field theory involved is the simplest model of a quantum field that has an exact solution. This elementary model is still nontrivial in terms of its dynamics, as the calculation of quantum dynamics using standard eigenfunction techniques would require exponentially complex sums over multi-dimensional overlap integrals. This is not practicable, and accordingly we use other methods including quantum phase-space representations to solve this problem.