Publications

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• Algebraic structure of classical integrability for complex sine-Gordon

  Jean Avan, Luc Frappat, Eric Ragoucy

  SciPost Phys. 8, 033 (2020) · published 2 March 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The algebraic structure underlying the classical $r$-matrix formulation of the complex sine-Gordon model is fully elucidated. It is characterized by two matrices $a$ and $s$, components of the $r$ matrix as $r=a-s$. They obey a modified classical reflection/Yang--Baxter set of equations, further deformed by non-abelian dynamical shift terms along the dual Lie algebra $su(2)^*$. The sign shift pattern of this deformation has the signature of the twisted boundary dynamical algebra. Issues related to the quantization of this algebraic structure and the formulation of quantum complex sine-Gordon on those lines are introduced and discussed.

  1 citation

• Random matrix universality in dynamical correlation functions at late times

  Oscar Bouverot-Dupuis, Silvia Pappalardi, Jorge Kurchan, Anatoli Polkovnikov, Laura Foini

  SciPost Phys. 19, 050 (2025) · published 20 August 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the behaviour of two-time correlation functions at late times for finite system sizes considering observables whose (one-point) average value does not depend on energy. In the long time limit, we show that such correlation functions display a ramp and a plateau determined by the correlations of energy levels, similar to what is already known for the spectral form factor. The plateau value is determined, in absence of degenerate energy levels, by the fluctuations of diagonal matrix elements, which highlights differences between different symmetry classes. We show this behaviour analytically by employing results from Random Matrix Theory and the Eigenstate Thermalisation Hypothesis, and numerically by exact diagonalization in the toy example of a Hamiltonian drawn from a Random Matrix ensemble and in a more realistic example of disordered spin glasses at high temperature. Importantly, correlation functions in the ramp regime do not show self-averaging behaviour, and, at difference with the spectral form factor the time average does not coincide with the ensemble average.

  1 citation

• Space-time first-order correlations of an open Bose Hubbard model with incoherent pump and loss

  Martina Zündel, Leonardo Mazza, Léonie Canet, Anna Minguzzi

  SciPost Phys. 18, 095 (2025) · published 17 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the correlation properties in the steady state of driven-dissipative interacting bosonic systems in the quantum regime, as for example non-linear photonic cavities. Specifically, we consider the Bose-Hubbard model on a periodic chain and with spatially homogeneous one-body loss and pump within the Markovian approximation. The steady state is non-thermal and is formally equivalent to an infinite-temperature state with finite chemical potential set by the dissipative parameters. While there is no effect of interactions on the steady state, we observe a nontrivial behaviour of the space-time two-point correlation function, obtained by exact diagonalisation. In particular, we find that the decay width of the propagator is not only renormalised at increasing interactions, as it is the case of a single non-linear resonator, but also at increasing hopping strength. Furthermore, we numerically predict at large interactions a plateau value of the decay rate which goes beyond perturbative results in the interaction strength. We then compute the full spectral function, finding that it contains both a dispersive free-particle like dispersion at low energy and a doublon branch at energy corresponding to the on-site interactions. We compare with the corresponding calculation for the ground state of a closed quantum system and show that the driven-dissipative nature – determining both the steady state and the dynamical evolution – changes the low-lying part of the spectrum, where noticeably, the dispersion is quadratic instead of linear at small wavevectors. Finally, we compare to a high temperature grand-canonical equilibrium state and show the difference with respect to the open system stemming from the additional degree of freedom of the dissipation that allows one to vary the width of the dispersion lines.

  1 citation

• Conformal geometry from entanglement

  Isaac H. Kim, Xiang Li, Ting-Chun Lin, John McGreevy, Bowen Shi

  SciPost Phys. 18, 102 (2025) · published 19 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In a physical system with conformal symmetry, observables depend on cross-ratios, measures of distance invariant under global conformal transformations (conformal geometry for short). We identify a quantum information-theoretic mechanism by which the conformal geometry emerges at the gapless edge of a 2+1D quantum many-body system with a bulk energy gap. We introduce a novel pair of information-theoretic quantities $(\mathfrak{c}_{\textrm{tot}}, \eta)$ that can be defined locally on the edge from the wavefunction of the many-body system, without prior knowledge of any distance measure. We posit that, for a topological groundstate, the quantity $\mathfrak{c}_{\textrm{tot}}$ is stationary under arbitrary variations of the quantum state, and study the logical consequences. We show that stationarity, modulo an entanglement-based assumption about the bulk, implies (i) $\mathfrak{c}_{\textrm{tot}}$ is a non-negative constant that can be interpreted as the total central charge of the edge theory. (ii) $\eta$ is a cross-ratio, obeying the full set of mathematical consistency rules, which further indicates the existence of a distance measure of the edge with global conformal invariance. Thus, the conformal geometry emerges from a simple assumption on groundstate entanglement. We show that stationarity of $\mathfrak{c}_{\textrm{tot}}$ is equivalent to a vector fixed-point equation involving $\eta$, making our assumption locally checkable. We also derive similar results for 1+1D systems under a suitable set of assumptions.

  1 citation

• Acceleration-induced transport of quantum vortices in joined atomtronic circuits

  Andrii Chaika, Artem O. Oliinyk, Ihor V. Yatsuta, Nick P. Proukakis, Mark Edwards, Alexander I. Yakimenko, Thomas Bland

  SciPost Phys. 19, 005 (2025) · published 2 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Persistent currents–inviscid quantized flow around an atomic circuit–are a crucial building block of atomtronic devices. We investigate how acceleration influences the transfer of persistent currents between two density-connected, ring-shaped atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, joined by a tunable weak link that controls system topology. We find that the acceleration of this system modifies both the density and phase dynamics between the rings, leading to a bias in the periodic vortex oscillations studied in T. Bland et al., Phys. Rev. Research 4, 043171 (2022). Accounting for dissipation suppressing such vortex oscillations, the acceleration facilitates a unilateral vortex transfer to the leading ring. We analyze how this transfer depends on the weak-link amplitude, the initial persistent current configuration, and the acceleration strength and direction. Characterization of the sensitivity to these parameters paves the way for a new platform for acceleration measurements, for which we outline a proof-of-concept ultracold double-ring accelerometer.

  1 citation

• Comment on Coleman-DeLuccia instantons

  Tom Banks, Bingnan Zhang

  SciPost Phys. 12, 015 (2022) · published 11 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We complete an old argument that causal diamonds in the crunching region of the Lorentzian continuation of a Coleman-Deluccia instanton for transitions out of de Sitter space have finite area, and provide quantum models consistent with the principle of detailed balance, which can mimic the instanton transition probabilities for the cases where this diamond is larger or smaller than the causal patch of de Sitter space. We review arguments that potentials which do not have a positive energy theorem when the lowest de Sitter minimum is shifted to zero, may not correspond to real models of quantum gravity.

  1 citation

• Heavy-light $N+1$ clusters of two-dimensional fermions

  Jules Givois, Andrea Tononi, Dmitry S. Petrov

  SciPost Phys. 17, 050 (2024) · published 13 August 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study binding of $N$ identical heavy fermions by a light atom in two dimensions assuming zero-range attractive heavy-light interactions. By using the mean-field theory valid for large $N$ we show that the $N+1$ cluster is bound when the mass ratio exceeds $1.074N^2$. The mean-field theory, being scale invariant in two dimensions, predicts only the shapes of the clusters leaving their sizes and energies undefined. By taking into account beyond-mean-field effects we find closed-form expressions for these quantities. We also discuss differences between the Thomas-Fermi and Hartree-Fock approaches for treating the heavy fermions.

  1 citation

• Neural quantum state study of fracton models

  Marc Machaczek, Lode Pollet, Ke Liu

  SciPost Phys. 18, 112 (2025) · published 28 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Fracton models host unconventional topological orders in three and higher dimensions and provide promising candidates for quantum memory platforms. Understanding their robustness against quantum fluctuations is an important task but also poses great challenges due to the lack of efficient numerical tools. In this work, we establish neural quantum states (NQS) as new tools to study phase transitions in these models. Exact and efficient parametrizations are derived for three prototypical fracton codes — the checkerboard and X-cube model, as well as Haah's code — both in terms of a restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) and a correlation-enhanced RBM. We then adapt the correlation-enhanced RBM architecture to a perturbed checkerboard model and reveal its strong first-order phase transition between the fracton phase and a trivial field-polarizing phase. To this end, we simulate this highly entangled system on lattices of up to 512 qubits with high accuracy, representing a cutting-edge application of variational neural-network methods. In addition, we reproduce the phase transition of the X-cube model previously obtained with quantum Monte Carlo and high-order series expansion methods. Our work demonstrates the remarkable potential of NQS in studying complicated three-dimensional problems and highlights physics-oriented constructions of NQS architectures.

  1 citation

• How to escape atypical regions in the symmetric binary perceptron: A journey through connected-solutions states

  Damien Barbier

  SciPost Phys. 18, 115 (2025) · published 31 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the binary symmetric perceptron model, and in particular its atypical solutions. While the solution-space of this problem is dominated by isolated configurations, it is also solvable for a certain range of constraint density $\alpha$ and threshold $\kappa$. We provide in this paper a statistical measure probing sequences of solutions, where two consecutive elements shares a strong overlap. After simplifications, we test its predictions by comparing it to Monte-Carlo simulations. We obtain good agreement and show that connected states with a Markovian correlation profile can fully decorrelate from their initialization only for $\kappa>\kappa_{\rm no-mem.\, state}$ ($\kappa_{\rm no-mem.\, state}\sim \sqrt{0.91\log(N)}$ for $\alpha=0.5$ and $N$ being the dimension of the problem). For $\kappa<\kappa_{\rm no-mem.\, state}$, we show that decorrelated sequences still exist but have a non-trivial correlations profile. To study this regime we introduce an Ansatz for the correlations that we label as the nested Markov chain.

  1 citation

• Random circuits in the black hole interior

  Javier M. Magan, Martin Sasieta, Brian Swingle

  SciPost Phys. 19, 007 (2025) · published 3 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a quantitative holographic relation between a microscopic measure of randomness and the geometric length of the wormhole in the black hole interior. To this end, we perturb an AdS black hole with Brownian semiclassical sources, implementing the continuous version of a random quantum circuit for the black hole. We use the random circuit to prepare ensembles of states of the black hole whose semiclassical duals contain Einstein-Rosen (ER) caterpillars: Long cylindrical wormholes with large numbers of matter inhomogeneities, of linearly growing length with the circuit time. In this setup, we show semiclassically that the ensemble of ER caterpillars of average length $k\ell_{\Delta}$ and matter correlation scale $\ell_{\Delta}$ forms an approximate quantum state $k$-design of the black hole. At exponentially long circuit times, the ensemble of ER caterpillars becomes polynomial-copy indistinguishable from a collection of random states of the black hole. We comment on the implications of these results for holographic circuit complexity and for the holographic description of the black hole interior.

  1 citation