In the thermodynamic limit, a many-body ground state has zero overlap with another state which is a slightly perturbed state of the original one, known as the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe (AOC). The amplitude of the overlap for two generic ground states typically exhibits exponential or power-law decay as the system size increases to infinity. In this paper, we show that for generic
(2+1)-D topological systems at fixed points, there exists a universal topological response term in the scaling of the ground-state overlap. For Laughlin wave functions, in particular, we also find a leading term decaying faster than exponential, which is beyond AOC. Such finite-size scaling behaviors could be utilized to theoretically detect the gapless edge modes, distinguish the topology of quantum states or serve as a signature for topological phase transitions.
We investigate the statistical orthogonality catastrophe (STOC) in single-particle and many-body localized systems by studying the response of the many-body ground state to a local quench. Using scaling arguments and exact numerical calculations, we establish that the STOC gives rise to a wave function overlap between the pre- and postquench ground states that has an exponential decay with the system size, in sharp contrast to the well-known power law Anderson orthogonality catastrophe in metallic systems. This exponential decay arises from a statistical charge transfer process where a particle can be effectively ``transported'' to an arbitrary lattice site. In a many-body localized phase, this nonlocal transport and the associated exponential STOC phenomenon persist in the presence of interactions. We study the possible experimental consequences of the exponential STOC on the Loschmidt echo and spectral function, establishing that this phenomenon might be observable in cold atomic experiments through Ramsey interference and radio-frequency spectroscopy.
We show that the N-particle Sutherland model with inverse-square and harmonic interactions exhibits orthogonality catastrophe. For a fixed value of the harmonic coupling, the overlap of the N-body ground state wave functions with two different values of the inverse-square interaction term goes to zero in the thermodynamic limit. When the two values of the inverse-square coupling differ by an infinitesimal amount, the wave function overlap shows an exponential suppression. This is qualitatively different from the usual power law suppression observed in the Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe. We also obtain an analytic expression for the wave function overlaps for an arbitrary set of couplings, whose properties are analyzed numerically. The quasiparticles constituting the ground state wave functions of the Sutherland model are known to obey fractional exclusion statistics. Our analysis indicates that the orthogonality catastrophe may be valid in systems with more general kinds of statistics than just the fermionic type.