Contributor info: Dr Piero Naldesi

Piero Naldesi, Juan Polo, Peter D. Drummond, Vanja Dunjko, Luigi Amico, Anna Minguzzi, Maxim Olshanii

SciPost Phys. 15, 187 (2023) · published 8 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We discuss an interferometric scheme employing interference of bright solitons formed as specific bound states of attracting bosons on a lattice. We revisit the proposal of Castin and Weiss [Phys. Rev. Lett. vol. 102, 010403 (2009)] for using the scattering of a quantum matter-wave soliton on a barrier in order to create a coherent superposition state of the soliton being entirely to the left of the barrier and being entirely to the right of the barrier. In that proposal, it was assumed that the scattering is perfectly elastic, i.e. that the center-of-mass kinetic energy of the soliton is lower than the chemical potential of the soliton. Here we relax this assumption: By employing a combination of Bethe ansatz and DMRG-based analysis of the dynamics of the appropriate many-body system, we find that the interferometric fringes persist even when the center-of-mass kinetic energy of the soliton is above the energy needed for its complete dissociation into constituent atoms.

P. Naldesi, J. Polo, V. Dunjko, H. Perrin, M. Olshanii, L. Amico, A. Minguzzi

SciPost Phys. 12, 138 (2022) · published 22 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We study a gas of attracting bosons confined in a ring shape potential pierced by an artificial magnetic field. Because of attractive interactions, quantum analogs of bright solitons are formed. As a genuine quantum-many-body feature, we demonstrate that angular momentum fractionalization occurs and that such effect manifests on time of flight measurements. As a consequence, the matter-wave current in our system can react to very small changes of rotation or other artificial gauge fields. We work out a protocol to entangle such quantum solitonic currents, allowing to operate rotation sensors and gyroscopes to Heisenberg-limited sensitivity. Therefore, we demonstrate that the specific coherence and entanglement properties of the system can induce an enhancement of sensitivity to an external rotation.

Piero Naldesi, Elisa Ercolessi, Tommaso Roscilde

SciPost Phys. 1, 010 (2016) · published 27 October 2016 | Toggle abstract · pdf

The many-body localization (MBL) transition is a quantum phase transition involving highly excited eigenstates of a disordered quantum many-body Hamiltonian, which evolve from "extended/ergodic" (exhibiting extensive entanglement entropies and fluctuations) to "localized" (exhibiting area-law scaling of entanglement and fluctuations). The MBL transition can be driven by the strength of disorder in a given spectral range, or by the energy density at fixed disorder - if the system possesses a many-body mobility edge. Here we propose to explore the latter mechanism by using "quantum-quench spectroscopy", namely via quantum quenches of variable width which prepare the state of the system in a superposition of eigenstates of the Hamiltonian within a controllable spectral region. Studying numerically a chain of interacting spinless fermions in a quasi-periodic potential, we argue that this system has a many-body mobility edge; and we show that its existence translates into a clear dynamical transition in the time evolution immediately following a quench in the strength of the quasi-periodic potential, as well as a transition in the scaling properties of the quasi-stationary state at long times. Our results suggest a practical scheme for the experimental observation of many-body mobility edges using cold-atom setups.