Bipartite Fluctuations Research Articles

Exponential Shortcut to Measurement-Induced Entanglement Phase Transitions.

Recently discovered measurement-induced entanglement phase transitions in monitored quantum circuits provide a novel example of far-from-equilibrium quantum criticality. Here, we propose a highly efficient strategy for experimentally accessing these transitions through fluctuations. Instead of directly measuring entanglement entropy, which requires an exponential number of measurements in the subsystem size, our method provides a scalable approach to entanglement transitions in the presence of conserved quantities. In analogy to entanglement entropy and mutual information, we illustrate how bipartite and multipartite fluctuations can both be employed to analyze the measurement-induced criticality. Remarkably, the phase transition can be revealed by measuring fluctuations of only a handful of qubits.

Escaping many-body localization in an exact eigenstate

Isolated quantum systems typically follow the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, but there are exceptions, such as many-body localized (MBL) systems and quantum many-body scars. Here, we present the study of a weak violation of MBL due to a special state embedded in a spectrum of MBL states. The special state is not MBL since it displays logarithmic scaling of the entanglement entropy and of the bipartite fluctuations of particle number with subsystem size. In contrast, the bulk of the spectrum becomes MBL as disorder is introduced. We establish this by studying the entropy as a function of disorder strength and by observing that the level spacing statistics undergoes a transition from Wigner-Dyson to Poisson statistics as the disorder strength is increased.

Signatures of quantum chaos in the dynamics of bipartite fluctuations

We study the signatures of quantum chaos by using the concept of bipartite fluctuations in the kicked two-site Bose–Hubbard model, which can be mapped to the well-studied kicked top model. By investigating the dynamics of bipartite fluctuations, we find that the evolution of bipartite fluctuations depends strongly on the initial conditions. This allows us to identify the signatures of quantum chaos through the dynamical characters of bipartite fluctuations. We further demonstrate that the evolution of bipartite fluctuations is closely related to the localization property of the evolved state in the particle number basis. Finally, we define the bipartite fluctuations power and show that it might be used as an indicator to identify the global chaos, The ability of this quantity to probe the quantum chaos is confirmed by comparing with the classical Lyapunov exponent.

Valence bond fluctuations in the Kitaev spin model

We introduce valence bond fluctuations, or bipartite fluctuations associated to bond-bond correlation functions, to characterize quantum spin liquids and their entanglement properties. Using analytical and numerical approaches, we find an identical scaling law between valence bond fluctuations and entanglement entropy in the two-dimensional Kitaev spin model and in one-dimensional chain analogues. We also show how these valence bond fluctuations can locate quantum phase transitions between the three gapped and the gapless Majorana semi-metal phases in the honeycomb model. We then study the effect of a uniform magnetic field along the 111 direction opening a gap in the intermediate phase which becomes topological. We still obtain a robust signal to characterize the transitions towards the three gapped phases. The linear scaling behavior of such bipartite fluctuations in two dimensions is also distinguishable from the one in the Neel magnetic state.

Bipartite fluctuations and topology of Dirac and Weyl systems

Bipartite fluctuations can provide interesting information about entanglement properties and correlations in many-body quantum systems. We address such fluctuations in relation with the topology of Dirac and Weyl quantum systems, in situations where the relevant particle number is not conserved, leading to additional volume laws scaling with the Quantum Fisher information. Through the example of the $p+ip$ superconductor, we build a relation between charge fluctuations and the associated winding numbers of Dirac cones in the low-energy sector. Topological aspects of the Hamiltonian in the vicinity of these points induce long-range entanglement in real space. We provide a detailed analysis of such fluctuation properties, including the role of gap anisotropy, and discuss higher-dimensional Weyl analogues.

Precursor of the Laughlin state of hard-core bosons on a two-leg ladder

We study hard core bosons on a two leg ladder lattice under the orbital effect of a uniform magnetic field. At densities which are incommensurate with flux, the ground state is a Meissner state, or a vortex state, depending on the strength of the flux. When the density is commensurate with the flux, analytical arguments predict the existence of a ground state of central charge $c = 1$, which displays signatures compatible with the expected Laughlin state at $\nu=1/2$. This differs from the coupled wire construction of the Laughlin state in that there exists a nonzero backscattering term in the edge Hamiltonian. We construct a phase diagram versus density and flux in order to delimit the region where this precursor to the Laughlin state is the ground state, by using a combination of bosonization and numerics based on the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and exact diagonalization. We obtain the phase diagram from local observables and central charge. We use bipartite charge fluctuations to deduce the Luttinger parameter for the edge Luttinger liquid corresponding to the Laughlin state. The properties studied with local observables are confirmed by the long distance behavior of correlation functions. Our findings are consistent with a calculation of the many body ground state transverse conductivity in a thin torus geometry for parameters corresponding to the Laughlin state. The model considered is simple enough such that the precursor to the Laughlin state could be realized in current ultracold atom, Josephson junction array, and quantum circuit experiments.

Quantum variance: A measure of quantum coherence and quantum correlations for many-body systems

Quantum coherence is a fundamental common trait of quantum phenomena, from the interference of matter waves to quantum degeneracy of identical particles. Despite its importance, estimating and measuring quantum coherence in generic, mixed many-body quantum states remains a formidable challenge, with fundamental implications in areas as broad as quantum condensed matter, quantum information, quantum metrology and quantum biology. Here we provide a quantitative definition of the variance of quantum coherent fluctuations (the quantum variance) of any observable on generic quantum states. The quantum variance generalizes the concept of thermal de Broglie wavelength (for the position of a free quantum particle) to the space of eigenvalues of any observable, quantifying the degree of coherent delocalization in that space. The quantum variance is generically measurable and computable as the difference between the static fluctuations and the static susceptibility of the observable; despite its simplicity, it is found to provide a tight lower bound to most widely accepted estimators of "quantumness" of observables (both as a feature as well as a resource), such as the Wigner-Yanase skew information and the quantum Fisher information. When considering bipartite fluctuations in an extended quantum system, the quantum variance expresses genuine quantum correlations (of discord type) among the two parts. In the case of many-body systems it is found to obey an area law at finite temperature, extending therefore area laws of entanglement and quantum fluctuations of pure states to the mixed-state context. Hence the quantum variance paves the way to the measurement of macroscopic quantum coherence and quantum correlations in most complex quantum systems.

Phase diagram and entanglement of two interacting topological Kitaev chains

A superconducting wire described by a $p$-wave pairing and a Kitaev Hamiltonian exhibits Majorana fermions at its edges and is topologically protected by symmetry. We consider two Kitaev wires (chains) coupled by a Coulomb-type interaction and study the complete phase diagram using analytical and numerical techniques. A topological superconducting phase with four Majorana fermions occurs until moderate interactions between chains. For large interactions, both repulsive and attractive, by analogy with the Hubbard model, we identify Mott phases with Ising-type magnetic order. For repulsive interactions, the Ising antiferromagnetic order favors the occurrence of orbital currents spontaneously breaking time-reversal symmetry. By strongly varying the chemical potentials of the two chains, quantum phase transitions towards fully polarized (empty or full) fermionic chains occur. In the Kitaev model, the quantum critical point separating the topological superconducting phase and the polarized phase belongs to the universality class of the critical Ising model in two dimensions. When increasing the Coulomb interaction between chains, then we identify an additional phase corresponding to two critical Ising theories (or two chains of Majorana fermions). We confirm the existence of such a phase from exact mappings and from the concept of bipartite fluctuations. We show the existence of negative logarithmic corrections in the bipartite fluctuations, as a reminiscence of the quantum critical point in the Kitaev model. Other entanglement probes such as bipartite entropy and entanglement spectrum are also used to characterize the phase diagram. The limit of large interactions can be reached in an equivalent setup of ultracold atoms and Josephson junctions.

Signatures of the many-body localization transition in the dynamics of entanglement and bipartite fluctuations

The many-body localization transition is a dynamical quantum phase transition between a localized and an extended phase. We study this transition in the XXZ model with disordered magnetic field and focus on the time evolution following a global quantum quench. While the dynamics of the bipartite entanglement and spin fluctuations are already known to provide insights into the nature of the many-body localized phases, we discuss the relevance of these quantities in the context of the localization transition. In particular, we observe that near the transition the long time limits of both quantities show behavior similar to divergent thermodynamic fluctuations.

Fluctuations and entanglement spectrum in quantum Hall states

The measurement of quantum entanglement in many-body systems remains challenging. One experimentally relevant fact about quantum entanglement is that in systems whose degrees of freedom map to free fermions with conserved total particle number, exact relations hold relating the full counting statistics associated with the bipartite charge fluctuations and the sequence of Rényi entropies. We draw a correspondence between the bipartite charge fluctuations and the entanglement spectrum, through the Rényi entropies. In the case of the integer quantum Hall effect, we show that it is possible to reproduce the generic features of the entanglement spectrum from a measurement of the second charge cumulant only. Additionally, asking whether it is possible to extend the free fermion result to the ν = 1/3 fractional quantum Hall case, we provide numerical evidence that the answer is negative in general. We further address the problem of quantum Hall edge states described by a Luttinger liquid, and derive expressions for the spectral functions of the real space entanglement spectrum at a quantum point contact realized in a quantum Hall sample.

Block entanglement and fluctuations in finite-size correlated electron systems

The block entanglement entropy and fluctuations are investigated in one dimension in finite-size correlated electron systems using the Gutzwiller wave function as a prototype correlated electron state. Entanglement entropy shows logarithmic divergence for all values of the correlation projection parameter $g$, as predicted by conformal field theories for critical systems, but the central charge requires finite-size corrections. There is an infinite correlation length corresponding to correlation between the same kinds of spins, for all values of $g$. A scaling form for the block entropy, as a function of $g$ and the system size $N$, is proposed which predicts a metal-insulator crossover at ${N}^{1/3}g\ensuremath{\approx}0.24$ for $N<{10}^{5}$. Bipartite fluctuations in the number of particles in a block, and the spin fluctuations also obey an approximate scaling. A relation is found between the block entropy and the bipartite spin fluctuations. Our results show some correspondence with an experiment on Ni nanochains.

Linear quantum quench in the Heisenberg XXZ chain: Time-dependent Luttinger-model description of a lattice system

We study variable-rate linear quenches in the anisotropic Heisenberg (XXZ) chain, starting at the XX point. This is equivalent to switching on a nearest neighbour interaction for hard-core bosons or an interaction quench for free fermions. The physical observables we investigate are: the energy pumped into the system during the quench, the spin-flip correlation function, and the bipartite fluctuations of the z component of the spin in a box. We find excellent agreement between exact numerics (infinite system time-evolving block decimation, iTEBD) and analytical results from bosonization, as a function of the quench time, spatial coordinate and interaction strength. This provides a stringent and much-needed test of Luttinger liquid theory in a non-equilibrium situation.

Detecting Quantum Critical Points Using Bipartite Fluctuations

We show that the concept of bipartite fluctuations F provides a very efficient tool to detect quantum phase transitions in strongly correlated systems. Using state-of-the-art numerical techniques complemented with analytical arguments, we investigate paradigmatic examples for both quantum spins and bosons. As compared to the von Neumann entanglement entropy, we observe that F allows us to find quantum critical points with much better accuracy in one dimension. We further demonstrate that F can be successfully applied to the detection of quantum criticality in higher dimensions with no prior knowledge of the universality class of the transition. Promising approaches to experimentally access fluctuations are discussed for quantum antiferromagnets and cold gases.

Bipartite fluctuations as a probe of many-body entanglement

We investigate in detail the behavior of the bipartite fluctuations of particle number $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{N}$ and spin ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{S}}^{z}$ in many-body quantum systems, focusing on systems where such U(1) charges are both conserved and fluctuate within subsystems due to exchange of charges between subsystems. We propose that the bipartite fluctuations are an effective tool for studying many-body physics, particularly its entanglement properties, in the same way that noise and full counting statistics have been used in mesoscopic transport and cold-atomic gases. For systems that can be mapped to a problem of noninteracting fermions, we show that the fluctuations and higher-order cumulants fully encode the information needed to determine the entanglement entropy as well as the full entanglement spectrum through the R\'enyi entropies. In this connection, we derive a simple formula that explicitly relates the eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix to the R\'enyi entropies of integer order for any finite density matrix. In other systems, particularly in one dimension, the fluctuations are in many ways similar but not equivalent to the entanglement entropy. Fluctuations are tractable analytically, computable numerically in both density matrix renormalization-group and quantum Monte Carlo calculations, and in principle accessible in condensed-matter and cold-atom experiments. In the context of quantum point contacts, measurement of the second charge cumulant showing a logarithmic dependence on time would constitute a strong indication of many-body entanglement.