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Computational and Theoretical Insights into Multi-Body Quantum Systems

Andrew Stasiuk

Published Mar 31, 2021• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

In generality, perfect predictions of the structure and dynamics of multi-body quantum systems are few and far between. As experimental design advances and becomes more refined, experimentally probing the interactions of multiple quantum systems has become commonplace. Predicting this behavior is not a ``one size fits all" problem, and has lead to the inception of a multitude of successful theoretical techniques which have made precise and verifiable predictions through, in many cases, clever approximations and assumptions. As the state-of-the-art pushes the quantum frontier to new experimental regimes, many of the old techniques become invalid, and there is often no tractable methodology to fall back on. \n \nThis work focuses on expanding the theoretical techniques for making predictions in newly accessible experimental regimes. The transport of quantum information in a room-temperature dipolar spin network is veritably diffusive in nature, but much less is known about the transport properties of such a sample at low temperatures. This work presupposes that diffusion is still a good model for incoherent transport at low temperatures, and proposes a new method to calculate its diffusion coefficient. The diffusion coefficient is reported as a function of the temperature of the ensemble. Further, the interaction of an i.i.d. spin ensemble with a quantized electromagnetic field has long been analyzed via restriction to the Dicke subspace implicit in the Holstein--Primakoff approximation, as well as other within other approximations. This work reanalyzes the conditions under which such a restriction is valid. In regimes where it is shownt that restricting to the Dicke subspace would be invalid, the Hamiltonian structure is thoroughly analyzed. Various predictions can be made by appealing to a reduction in effective dimensionality via a direct sum decomposition. \n \nThe main theme of the techniques utilized throughout this work is to appeal to a reduction in difficulty via various theoretical tools in order to prepare for an otherwise intractable computational analysis. Computational insights due to this technique have then gone on to motivate directly provable theoretical results, which might otherwise have remained hidden behind the complexity of the structure and dynamics of a multi-body quantum system.

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In generality, perfect predictions of the structure and dynamics of multi-body quantum systems are few and far between. As experimental design advances and becomes more refined, experimentally probing the interactions of multiple quantum systems has become commonplace. Predicting this behavior is not a ``one size fits all" problem, and has lead to the inception of a multitude of successful theoretical techniques which have made precise and verifiable predictions through, in many cases, clever approximations and assumptions. As the state-of-the-art pushes the quantum frontier to new experimental regimes, many of the old techniques become invalid, and there is often no tractable methodology to fall back on. \n \nThis work focuses on expanding the theoretical techniques for making predictions in newly accessible experimental regimes. The transport of quantum information in a room-temperature dipolar spin network is veritably diffusive in nature, but much less is known about the transport properties of such a sample at low temperatures. This work presupposes that diffusion is still a good model for incoherent transport at low temperatures, and proposes a new method to calculate its diffusion coefficient. The diffusion coefficient is reported as a function of the temperature of the ensemble. Further, the interaction of an i.i.d. spin ensemble with a quantized electromagnetic field has long been analyzed via restriction to the Dicke subspace implicit in the Holstein--Primakoff approximation, as well as other within other approximations. This work reanalyzes the conditions under which such a restriction is valid. In regimes where it is shownt that restricting to the Dicke subspace would be invalid, the Hamiltonian structure is thoroughly analyzed. Various predictions can be made by appealing to a reduction in effective dimensionality via a direct sum decomposition. \n \nThe main theme of the techniques utilized throughout this work is to appeal to a reduction in difficulty via various theoretical tools in order to prepare for an otherwise intractable computational analysis. Computational insights due to this technique have then gone on to motivate directly provable theoretical results, which might otherwise have remained hidden behind the complexity of the structure and dynamics of a multi-body quantum system.
Among the few lessons that Physics teaches us on a daily basis, one in particular is hard to miss: thermalization processes are ubiquitous. With the same degree of certainty, one can predict an apple to fall onto the ground if its stalk is cut, or a cup of tea to be found cold if left on the table for too long. In this respect, generic classical and quantum mechanical systems seem to behave in the same way. This is also one of the main difficulties in the experimental observation of the bizarre effects predicted from the quantum theory, as several of these are known to disappear at finite temperatures. It has been known for a long time that thermalization is associated with “chaotic” behavior at the microscopic level, but recently systematic efforts, both theoretical and experimental, have allowed us to understand its mechanisms at an unprecedented level of accuracy. Indeed, it has been realized that thermalization generally occurs also in isolated systems, where the absence of interactions with the environment allows for first principle theoretical investigations1. In this case thermalization takes place locally, as the whole system acts as a thermal bath for its own subsystems. Theoretical research has been motivated and paralleled by exciting experimental progress in cold-atom physics, which has provided robust, nearly ideal realizations of several theoretical models2. As an established piece of knowledge, recent research has now confirmed that two outstanding exceptions actually exist in the quantum realm, where thermalization is prevented to occur. These are many-body localized systems3, where disorder plays a crucial role, and integrable ones, which are protected by the existence of higher conservation laws. By their own nature, these systems display exceptional non-equilibrium features, which are not washed out by the onset of thermalization as relaxation occurs. At the core of the present thesis lie the remarkable properties of integrable systems out of equilibrium, with a special attention to physical effects which could be observed in cold-atom realizations. The work collected here is part of a large theoretical effort4 which in the past decade has focused on the study of relatively simple protocols to bring a quantum system out of equilibrium, such as the so-called quantum quench. In these “theoretical laboratories” it has been possible to provide quantitative predictions which helped us to develop an intuition on general questions regarding non-equilibrium and thermalization processes. Furthermore, in some cases these studies have highlighted interesting physical effects which could be directly probed experimentally within cold-atom settings. The contribution of the present thesis is two-fold. On the one hand, we have developed new technical tools for the study of integrable systems out of equilibrium, and for the computation of measurable physical quantities such as correlation functions. The techniques employed are mainly analytical and rooted within the mathematical structures of integrability. On the other hand, we have singled out physically relevant nonequilibrium situations where exotic, non-thermal states of matter emerge after relaxation occurs, and provided quantitative analytical predictions in these cases. A comprehensive discussion of the motivations and results of our work will be presented in Chapter 1, where we provide a complete overview of this thesis and discuss the organization of its content.
The interaction among fundamental particles in nature leads to many interesting effects in quantum statistical mechanics; examples include superconductivity for charged systems and superfluidity in cold gases. It is a huge challenge for mathematical physics to understand the collective behavior of systems containing a large number of particles, emerging from known microscopic interactions. In this workshop we brought together researchers working on different aspects of many-body quantum mechanics to discuss recent developments, exchange ideas and propose new challenges and research directions.
We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of a one-dimensional complex Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev chain by directly solving for the steady state Green's functions in terms of small perturbations around their equilibrium values. The model exhibits non-Fermi-liquid behavior without quasiparticles and features diffusive propagation of both energy and charge. We explore the thermoelectric transport properties of this system by imposing uniform temperature and chemical potential gradients. We then expand the conserved charges and their associated currents to leading order in these gradients, which we can compute numerically and analytically for different parameter regimes. This allows us to extract the full temperature and chemical potential dependence of the transport coefficients. In particular, we uncover that the diffusivity matrix takes on a simple form in various limits and leads to simplified Einstein relations. At low temperatures, we also recover a previously known result for the Wiedemann-Franz ratio. Furthermore, we establish a relationship between diffusion and quantum chaos by showing that the diffusivity eigenvalues are upper bounded by the chaos propagation rate at all temperatures. Our work showcases an important example of an analytically tractable calculation of transport properties in a strongly interacting quantum system and reveals a more general purpose method for addressing strongly coupled transport.
We show how the decoherence that occurs in an entangling atomic spin–light interface can be simply modeled as the dynamics of a bosonic mode. Although one seeks to control the collective spin of the atomic system in the permutationally invariant (symmetric) subspace, diffuse scattering and optical pumping are local, making an exact description of the many-body state intractable. To overcome this issue we develop a generalized Holstein–Primakoff approximation for collective states which is valid when decoherence is uniform across a large atomic ensemble. In different applications the dynamics is conveniently treated as a Wigner function evolving according to a thermalizing diffusion equation, or by a Fokker–Planck equation for a bosonic mode decaying in a zero-temperature reservoir. We use our formalism to study the combined effect of Hamiltonian evolution, local and collective decoherence, and measurement backaction in preparing nonclassical spin states for application in quantum metrology.
Interacting many-body quantum systems are in general difficult to treat. Getting an accurate description of the ground state of a many-body system is hard but standard techniques based on Monte Carlo methods are available. Getting the spectrum of elementary excitations is more involved, and approximation techniques based on elaborated perturbative approaches are in order. In the work the student will have to learn and use the theory of Corrlated Basis Functions, which allows for a reliable estimation of the dynamic structure function of a system of bosons.