Quantum Quench Dynamics and Entanglement
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
© 2018 by Tianci Zhou. All rights reserved. QUANTUM QUENCH DYNAMICS AND ENTANGLEMENT BY TIANCI ZHOU DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Assistant Professor Thomas Faulkner, Chair Professor Michael Stone, Director of Research Professor Peter Abbamonte Assistant Professor Lucas Wagner Abstract Quantum quench is a non-equilibrium process where the Hamiltonian is suddenly changed during the quan- tum evolution. The change can be made by spatially local perturbations (local quench) or globally switch- ing to a completely different Hamiltonian (global quench). This thesis investigates the post-quench non- equilibrium dynamics with an emphasis on the time dependence of the quantum entanglement. We inspect the scaling of entanglement entropy (EE) to learn how correlation and entanglement built up in a quench. We begin with two local quench examples. In Chap.2, we apply a local operator to the groundstate of the quantum Lifshitz model and monitor the change of the EE. We find that the entanglement grows according to the dynamical exponent z = 2 and then saturates to the scaling dimension of the perturbing operator { a value representing its strength. In Chap.3, we study the evolution after connecting two different one-dimensional critical chains at their ends. The Loschmidt echo which measures the similarity between the evolved state and the initial one decays with a power law, whose exponent is the scaling dimension of the defect (junction). Among other conclusions, we see that the local quench dynamics contain universal information of the (critical) theory. In the global quench scenario, the change of the Hamiltonian affects all parts of the system. In this thesis, we focus on the global chaotic quench driven by generic non-integrable Hamiltonians. In Chap.4, we propose to use the operator entanglement entropy of the unitary operator as a probe. Its fast linear entanglement production is sharply contrasted to the slow logarithmic spreading of the many-body localized system. The entanglement saturation suggests that the evolution operator in the long time can be modeled by a random unitary matrix. In Chap.5, we construct a random tensor network which consists of random unitary matrices connected locally to model chaotic evolution with local interactions. We find that the entanglement dynamics is mapped to the statistical mechanics of interacting random walks. This appealing emergent picture allows us to understand the universal linear growth as well as the fluctuations of entanglement in a chaotic quench. ii To my parents. iii Acknowledgments I am deeply grateful to my advisor Prof. Michael Stone. Mike's Physics 508 at 9am on Monday was my very first class in UIUC. His instructions have persisted since then. It is fortunate to have his patient guidance in my starter projects and the often knowledgeable and constructive comments to all my later scientific works. Mike's research notes demonstrate how a combination of masterful mathematical skills and physical insights make solving physics problem an aesthetically appealing work, to which I wish to have my own contribution. I thank Mike wholeheartedly for the freedom to choose research topics, sincere career advices, and all the jokes and academia anecdotes in our delightful conversations. Among others, I have my gratitude to all the people who taught me physics, including Prof. Thomas Faulkner, Prof. Eduardo Fradkin, Prof. Shinsei Ryu, Prof. Nigel Goldenfeld, Prof. Stuart Shapiro and many others. Their office doors and minds are always open for my questions and confusions. It is my pleasure to collaborate with some of them, and other physicists such as Dr. Xiao Chen, Dr. David Luitz, Dr. Mao Lin, Prof. David Huse, Prof. Cenke Xu and Dr. Adam Nahum, who inspired and educated me through numerous board discussions, emails and online video conversations on the problems of our common interest. I would like to acknowledge many friends at UIUC for their accompany and support. Special thanks must go to our study group members Xiongjie Yu, Bo Han and Ye Zhuang, with whom I consult and casually chat from time to time. I also appreciate the research, career and life experiences shared by many (then-) fellow graduate students Ching-Kai Chiu, Po-yao Chang, Xiao Chen, Vatsal Dwivedi, Xueda Wen, Di Zhou, Chang-tse Hsieh, Pok-an Chen, Matthew Lapa (four-year office mate) and other postdocs. I thank Po-yao Chang, Yueqing Chang and Luke Yeo for generously lending their clean and exhaustive course notes for me to review and catch up. There are so many memorable moments with these folks, and other friends like Kridsanaphong Limtragool, Da Ku, Lixiang Li, Can Zhang, Chi Xue, Yizhi Fang, Wenchao Xu, Zihe Gao, Yang Bai, Hu Jin, Mao-Chuang Yeh, Peiwen Tsai, Han-Yi Chou, Mao Lin, Tianhe Li, Huacheng Cai, Di Luo and many others not mentioned here. The dinners and barbecues we had, the Frisbee games we played, the road trips we enjoyed eased my mind to be less turbulent and stressful. Finally, I own everything to my dear parents. Their unconditional support for my career, regardless of iv its popularity, their own economic and health status, is extremely valuable. This thesis is dedicated to them. For part of the thesis work, I was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant NSF DMR 1306011. v Table of Contents List of Abbreviations .........................................viii Chapter 1 Introduction to Quantum Quench .......................... 1 1.1 Introduction to Quantum Quench..................................1 1.2 Entanglement in Quantum Quench.................................5 Chapter 2 Entanglement Entropy of Local Operators in Quantum Lifshitz Theory . 14 2.1 Introduction.............................................. 14 2.2 Introduction to Quantum Lifshitz Model and Its Dynamics................... 15 2.3 Excess Entanglement Entropy.................................... 18 2.4 Results and Discussion........................................ 25 2.5 Summary............................................... 31 Chapter 3 Bipartite Fidelity and Loschmidt Echo of the Bosonic Conformal Interface . 33 3.1 Introduction.............................................. 33 3.2 Bosonic Conformal Interface..................................... 35 3.3 Bipartite Fidelity and Loschmidt Echo............................... 39 3.4 Discussion............................................... 50 3.5 Conclusion.............................................. 53 Chapter 4 Operator Entanglement Entropy of the Time Evolution Operator . 54 4.1 Introduction.............................................. 54 4.2 Operator Entanglement Entropy (opEE) of the Time Evolution Operator........... 56 4.3 General Behavior of opEE...................................... 58 4.4 Models................................................. 62 4.5 Saturation Value........................................... 64 4.6 Growth................................................ 70 4.7 Conclusion.............................................. 74 Chapter 5 Entanglement of Quantum Quench by Random Unitary Circuits . 76 5.1 Introduction.............................................. 76 5.2 Overview of Results......................................... 79 5.3 Mapping to a `Lattice Magnet'................................... 87 5.4 Entanglement Production Rates................................... 93 5.5 The Entanglement Line Tension n ................................. 96 5.6 Fluctuations and the Replica LimitE ................................. 99 5.7 Numerical Checks Using the Operator Entanglement....................... 110 5.8 Saturation at Late Time and Page's Formula........................... 111 5.9 Dynamics without Noise....................................... 114 5.10 Outlook................................................ 115 vi Appendix A Appendices for the Lifshitz Quench Problem ..................117 A.1 Boundary Reproducing Kernel................................... 117 A.2 Equal Space Green Function for a Simply Connected Region................... 118 A.3 Alternative Calculation for the Equal Space Green Function on the Half Plane........ 120 A.4 Schwinger Parameter Calculation.................................. 123 A.5 Distributional Boundary Integral.................................. 124 Appendix B Appendices for the Conformal Interface Problem . 126 B.1 General Boundary State Amplitude................................. 126 B.2 Alternative Approach to DN λ Amplitude........................... 127 B.3 Corrections to the Free Energy!................................... 129 B.4 Winding Modes of Compact Bosons................................ 131 B.5 Conformal Interface in Free Bosonic Lattice............................ 134 B.6 A Determinant Identity for the Boundary State Amplitude................... 136 B.7 Numerical Computation of Bipartite Fidelity and Loschmidt Echo............... 137 Appendix C Appendices for the Operator Entanglement Entropy . 143 C.1 Channel-State Duality........................................ 143 C.2 Average opEE of Random Unitary Operator............................ 144 C.3 Lin Table Algorithm for Sz = 0 Sector............................... 148 Appendix D Appendices for the Random Tensor Network Problem . 150 1 D.1 Combinatorial Calculation of Z3(t) at Order q2 .......................... 150 D.2 Slope-dependent Line Tension (v)................................ 153