Finite-size Systems Research Articles

Critical non-Hermitian skin effect

Critical systems represent physical boundaries between different phases of matter and have been intensely studied for their universality and rich physics. Yet, with the rise of non-Hermitian studies, fundamental concepts underpinning critical systems - like band gaps and locality - are increasingly called into question. This work uncovers a new class of criticality where eigenenergies and eigenstates of non-Hermitian lattice systems jump discontinuously across a critical point in the thermodynamic limit, unlike established critical scenarios with spectrum remaining continuous across a transition. Such critical behavior, dubbed the “critical non-Hermitian skin effect”, arises whenever subsystems with dissimilar non-reciprocal accumulations are coupled, however weakly. This indicates, as elaborated with the generalized Brillouin zone approach, that the thermodynamic and zero-coupling limits are not exchangeable, and that even a large system can be qualitatively different from its thermodynamic limit. Examples with anomalous scaling behavior are presented as manifestations of the critical non-Hermitian skin effect in finite-size systems. More spectacularly, topological in-gap modes can even be induced by changing the system size. We provide an explicit proposal for detecting the critical non-Hermitian skin effect in an RLC circuit setup, which also directly carries over to established setups in non-Hermitian optics and mechanics.

Kinetic approach to nuclear-spin polaron formation

Under optical cooling of nuclei, a strongly correlated nuclear-spin polaron state can form in semiconductor nanostructures with localized charge carriers due to the strong hyperfine interaction of the localized electron spin with the surrounding nuclear spins. Here we develop a kinetic-equation formalism describing the nuclear-spin polaron formation. We present a derivation of the kinetic equations for an electron-nuclear spin system coupled to reservoirs of different electron and nuclear spin temperatures which generate the exact thermodynamic steady state for equal temperatures independent of the system size. We illustrate our approach using the analytical solution of the central spin model in the limit of an Ising form of the hyperfine coupling. For homogeneous hyperfine coupling constants, i.e., the box model, the model is reduced to an analytically solvable form. Based on the analysis of the nuclear-spin distribution function and the electron-nuclear spin correlators, we derive a relation between the electron and nuclear spin temperatures, where the correlated nuclear-spin polaron state is formed. In the limit of large nuclear baths, this temperature line coincides with the critical temperature of the mean-field theory for polaron formation. The criteria of the polaron formation in a finite-size system are discussed. We demonstrate that the system's behavior at the transition temperature does not depend on details of the hyperfine-coupling distribution function but only on the effective number of coupled bath spins. In addition, the kinetic equations enable the analysis of the temporal formation of the nuclear-polaron state, where we find the build-up process predominated by the nuclear spin-flip dynamics.

Majorana zero modes and their bosonization

The simplest continuum model of a one-dimensional non-interacting superconducting fermionic symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase is studied in great detail using analytical methods. In a first step, we present a full exact diagonalization of the fermionic Bogoliubov-de Gennes Hamiltonian for a system of finite length and with open boundaries. In particular, we derive exact analytical expressions for the Majorana zero modes emerging in the topologically non-trivial phase, revealing their spatial localization, their transformation properties under symmetry operations, and the exact finite-size energy splitting of the associated quasi-degenerate ground states. We then proceed to analyze the model via exact operator bosonization in both open and closed geometries. In the closed wire geometry, we demonstrate fermion parity switching from twisting boundary conditions in the topologically non-trivial phase. For the open wire, on the other hand, we first take a semiclassical approach employing the Mathieu equation to study the two quasi-degenerate ground states as well as their energy splitting at finite system sizes. We then finally derive the exact forms of the Majorana zero modes in the bosonic language using vertex-algebra techniques. These modes are verified to be in exact agreement with the results obtained from the fermionic description. The complementary viewpoints provided by the fermionic and bosonic formulations of the superconducting SPT phase are reconciled, allowing us to provide a complete and exact account of how Majorana zero modes manifest in a bosonized description of an SPT phase.

Nonergodic behavior of the clean Bose-Hubbard chain

We study ergodicity breaking in the clean Bose-Hubbard chain for small hopping strength. We see the existence of a non-ergodic regime by means of indicators as the half-chain entanglement entropy of the eigenstates, the average level spacing ratio, {the properties of the eigenstate-expectation distribution of the correlation and the scaling of the Inverse Participation Ratio averages.} We find that this ergodicity breaking {is different from many-body localization} because the average half-chain entanglement entropy of the eigenstates obeys volume law. This ergodicity breaking appears unrelated to the spectrum being organized in quasidegenerate multiplets at small hopping and finite system sizes, so in principle it can survive also for larger system sizes. We find that some imbalance oscillations in time which could mark the existence of a glassy behaviour in space are well described by the dynamics of a single symmetry-breaking doublet and {quantitatively} captured by a perturbative effective XXZ model. We show that the amplitude of these oscillations vanishes in the large-size limit. {Our findings are numerically obtained for systems with $L < 12$. Extrapolations of our scalings to larger system sizes should be taken with care, as discussed in the paper.

How eigenmode self-interaction affects zonal flows and convergence of tokamak core turbulence with toroidal system size

Self-interaction is the process by which a microinstability eigenmode that is extended along the direction parallel to the magnetic field interacts non-linearly with itself. This effect is particularly significant in gyrokinetic simulations accounting for kinetic passing electron dynamics and is known to generate stationary $E\times B$ zonal flow shear layers at radial locations near low-order mode rational surfaces (Weikl et al. Phys. Plasmas, vol. 25, 2018, 072305). We find that self-interaction, in fact, plays a very significant role in also generating fluctuating zonal flows, which is critical to regulating turbulent transport throughout the radial extent. Unlike the usual picture of zonal flow drive in which microinstability eigenmodes coherently amplify the flow via modulational instabilities, the self-interaction drive of zonal flows from these eigenmodes are uncorrelated with each other. It is shown that the associated shearing rate of the fluctuating zonal flows therefore reduces as more toroidal modes are resolved in the simulation. In simulations accounting for the full toroidal domain, such an increase in the density of toroidal modes corresponds to an increase in the toroidal system size, leading to a finite system size effect that is distinct from the well-known profile shearing effect.

GALYUM KATKILI ÇİNKO OKSİT NANOANTEN İLE MİKROLENS

Alternative plasmonics based fractal microlens are investigated. In this context, lensing performance of gallium-doped zinc oxide Sierpinski carpet-based fractal construction functionalized by conformal Talbot effect is analyzed for communication wavelength 1550 nm. Focusing via diffraction from these 2D finite-sized and two-iterated fractal lattice system is computationally demonstrated. In this regard, focusing performance parameters are computationally examined on the basis of geometrical parameter sweep and fractal generation via finite difference time-domain numerical simulations. Focusing efficiency &gt; 50%, absolute &#x0D; efficiency &gt; 18%, and focal depth larger than primary spot size are introduced by all computational samples. Moreover, a conformal Talbot effect is exhibited by this novel alternative plasmonics construction. A novel perspective based on alternative plasmonics by a newly adapted fractal design to optics is proposed. Thus, this fractal microlens is presented as a new planarized focusing platform, acting a conformal transformation optics device for light capturing tolerance and low-cost.

Asymptotic risk and phase transition of $l_{1}$-penalized robust estimator

Mean square error (MSE) of the estimator can be used to evaluate the performance of a regression model. In this paper, we derive the asymptotic MSE of $l_{1}$-penalized robust estimators in the limit of both sample size $n$ and dimension $p$ going to infinity with fixed ratio $n/p\rightarrow \delta $. We focus on the $l_{1}$-penalized least absolute deviation and $l_{1}$-penalized Huber’s regressions. Our analytic study shows the appearance of a sharp phase transition in the two-dimensional sparsity-undersampling phase space. We derive the explicit formula of the phase boundary. Remarkably, the phase boundary is identical to the phase transition curve of LASSO which is also identical to the previously known Donoho–Tanner phase transition for sparse recovery. Our derivation is based on the asymptotic analysis of the generalized approximation passing (GAMP) algorithm. We establish the asymptotic MSE of the $l_{1}$-penalized robust estimator by connecting it to the asymptotic MSE of the corresponding GAMP estimator. Our results provide some theoretical insight into the high-dimensional regression methods. Extensive computational experiments have been conducted to validate the correctness of our analytic results. We obtain fairly good agreement between theoretical prediction and numerical simulations on finite-size systems.

Magnetic properties of Mn doped ZnO: A Monte Carlo simulation analysis

Using the Monte Carlo simulation method within Ising model framework in two dimension, this work presents the study of the magnetic properties of Zn(1-x)MnxO (x = 0.05, 0.1, 0.2). In the simulation process, a classical Metropolis algorithm has been used to update the distribution of spins in the matrix and the algorithm is written in Python language. The simulation is based on the Ruderman–Kittel–Kasuya–Yosida (RKKY) indirect exchange interaction of doped Mn ions in host ZnO. We have analysed the results for a finite size system and have investigated the susceptibility, Binder parameter and specific heat as a function of temperature and doping concentration. The magnetic ordering is obtained for 5 and 10% doping at low temperature region while higher doping concentration (20%) leads to dominance of anti-ferromagnetic exchange interaction. Based on these theoretical results the prediction of magnetic properties of such kind dilute magnetic semiconductor (DMS) systems is possible. We believe that present theoretical analysis of the magnetic properties of DMS will provide valuable information about the two dimensional diluted system/structure.

Many-Body Dephasing in a Trapped-Ion Quantum Simulator.

How a closed interacting quantum many-body system relaxes and dephases as a function of time is a fundamental question in thermodynamic and statistical physics. In this Letter, we analyze and observe the persistent temporal fluctuations after a quantum quench of a tunable long-range interacting transverse-field Ising Hamiltonian realized with a trapped-ion quantum simulator. We measure the temporal fluctuations in the average magnetization of a finite-size system of spin-1/2 particles. We experiment in a regime where the properties of the system are closely related to the integrable Hamiltonian with global spin-spin coupling, which enables analytical predictions for the long-time nonintegrable dynamics. The analytical expression for the temporal fluctuations predicts the exponential suppression of temporal fluctuations with increasing system size. Our measurement data is consistent with our theory predicting the regime of many-body dephasing.

Bethe strings in the dynamical structure factor of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg XXX chain

Recently there has been a renewed interest in the spectra and role in dynamical properties of excited states of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain in longitudinal magnetic fields associated with Bethe strings. The latter are bound states of elementary magnetic excitations described by Bethe-ansatz complex non-real rapidities. Previous studies on this problem referred to finite-size systems. Here we consider the thermodynamic limit and study it for the isotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg XXX chain in a longitudinal magnetic field. We confirm that also in that limit the most significant spectral weight contribution from Bethe strings leads to (k,ω)-plane gapped continua in the spectra of the spin dynamical structure factors S+−(k,ω) and Sxx(k,ω)=Syy(k,ω). The contribution of Bethe strings to Szz(k,ω) is found to be small at low spin densities m and to become negligible upon increasing that density above m≈0.317. For S−+(k,ω), that contribution is found to be negligible at finite magnetic field. We derive analytical expressions for the line shapes of S+−(k,ω), Sxx(k,ω)=Syy(k,ω), and Szz(k,ω) valid in the (k,ω)-plane vicinity of singularities located at and just above the gapped lower thresholds of the Bethe-string states's spectra. As a side result and in order to provide an overall physical picture that includes the relative (k,ω)-plane location of all spectra with a significant amount of spectral weight, we revisit the general problem of the line-shape of the transverse and longitudinal spin dynamical structure factors at finite magnetic field and excitation energies in the (k,ω)-plane vicinity of other singularities. This includes those located at and just above the lower thresholds of the spectra that stem from excited states described by only real Bethe-ansatz rapidities.

Noncommutative generalized Gibbs ensemble in isolated integrable quantum systems

The generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE), which involves multiple conserved quantities other than the Hamiltonian, has served as the statistical-mechanical description of the long-time behavior for several isolated integrable quantum systems. The GGE may involve a noncommutative set of conserved quantities in view of the maximum entropy principle, and show that the GGE thus generalized (noncommutative GGE, NCGGE) gives a more qualitatively accurate description of the long-time behaviors than that of the conventional GGE. Providing a clear understanding of why the (NC)GGE well describes the long-time behaviors, we construct, for noninteracting models, the exact NCGGE that describes the long-time behaviors without an error even at finite system size. It is noteworthy that the NCGGE involves nonlocal conserved quantities, which can be necessary for describing long-time behaviors of local observables. We also give some extensions of the NCGGE and demonstrate how accurately they describe the long-time behaviors of few-body observables.

Chiral-anomaly-induced angular narrowing of the positive longitudinal magnetoconductivity in Weyl semimetals

The authors develop a method for magnetotransport study in finite-size systems and use it to evaluate magnetoconductivity of a disordered Weyl semimetal for both the ballistic and diffusive regimes.

Protecting quantum coherences from static noise and disorder

Quantum coherences are paramount resources for applications, such as quantum-enhanced light-harvesting or quantum computing, which are fragile against environmental noise. We here derive generalized quantum master equations using perturbation theory in order to describe the effective ensemble-averaged time-evolution of finite-size quantum systems subject to static noise on all time scales. We then analyse the time-evolution of the coherences under energy broadening noise in a variety of systems characterized by both short and long-range interactions, by strongly correlated and fully uncorrelated noise -- a single qubit, a lattice model with on-site disorder and a potential ladder, and bosons in a double-well potential with random interaction strength -- and show that couplings can partially protect the system from the ensemble-averaging induced loss of coherence. Our work suggests that suitably tuned couplings could be employed to counteract part of the dephasing detrimental to quantum applications. Conversely, tailored noise distributions can be utilized to reach target non-equilibrium quantum states.

Disordered Kitaev chain with long-range pairing: Loschmidt echo revivals and dynamical phase transitions

We explore the dynamics of long-range Kitaev chain by varying pairing interaction exponent. It is well known that the distinctive features of the nonequilibrium dynamics of a closed quantum system are closely related to the equilibrium phase transitions. Specifically, the return probability (Loschmidt echo) of the system to its initial state, in the finite-size system, is expected to exhibit periodicity after a sudden quench to a quantum critical point. The time of the first revivals scales inversely with the maximum of the group velocity. We show that, contrary to expectations, the periodicity of the return probability breaks for a sudden quench to the non-trivial quantum critical point. Further, we find that the periodicity of the return probability scales inversely with the group velocity at the gap closing point for a quench to the trivial critical point of truly long-range pairing case. Also, analyzing the effect of averaging quenched disorder shows that the revivals in the short-range pairing cases are more robust against disorder than that of the long-range pairing case. We also study the effect of disorder on the non-analyticities of the rate function of the return probability which introduced as a witness of the dynamical phase transition. We show that the non-analyticities in the rate function of return probability are washed out in the presence of strong disorders.

Dynamics of the vacuum state in a periodically driven Rydberg chain

We study the dynamics of the periodically driven Rydberg chain starting from the state with zero Rydberg excitations (vacuum state denoted by $|0\rangle$) using a square pulse protocol in the high drive amplitude limit. We show, using exact diagonalization for finite system sizes ($L\le 26$), that the Floquet Hamiltonian of the system, within a range of drive frequencies which we chart out, hosts a set of quantum scars which have large overlap with the $|0\rangle$ state. These scars are distinct from their counterparts having high overlap with the maximal Rydberg excitation state ($|\mathbb{Z}_2\rangle$); they coexist with the latter class of scars and lead to persistent coherent oscillations of the density-density correlator starting from the $|0\rangle$ state. We also identify special drive frequencies at which the system undergoes perfect dynamic freezing and provide an analytic explanation for this phenomenon. Finally, we demonstrate that for a wide range of drive frequencies, the system reaches a steady state with sub-thermal values of the density-density correlator. The presence of such sub-thermal steady states, which are absent for dynamics starting from the $|\mathbb{Z}_2\rangle$ state, imply a weak violation of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis in finite sized Rydberg chains distinct from that due to the scar-induced persistent oscillations reported earlier. We conjecture that in the thermodynamic limit such states may exist as pre-thermal steady states that show anomalously slow relaxation. We supplement our numerical results by deriving an analytic expression for the Floquet Hamiltonian using a Floquet perturbation theory in the high amplitude limit which provides an analytic, albeit qualitative, understanding of these phenomena at arbitrary drive frequencies. We discuss experiments which can test our theory.

Critical point fluctuations: Finite size and global charge conservation effects

We investigate simultaneous effects of finite system size and global charge conservation on thermal fluctuations in the vicinity of a critical point. For that we consider a finite interacting system which exchanges particles with a finite reservoir (thermostat), comprising a statistical ensemble that is distinct from the common canonical and grand canonical ensembles. As a particular example the van der Waals model is used. The global charge conservation effects strongly influence the cumulants of particle number distribution when the system size is comparable to that of the reservoir. If the system size is large enough to capture all the physics associated with the interactions, the global charge conservation effects can be accurately described and corrected for analytically, within a recently developed subensemble acceptance method. The finite size effects start to play a significant role when the correlation length grows large due to proximity of the critical point or when the system is small enough to be comparable to an eigenvolume of an individual particle. We discuss our results in the context of fluctuation measurements in heavy-ion collisions.

Capacity of the covariance perceptron

The classical perceptron is a simple neural network that performs a binary classification by a linear mapping between static inputs and outputs and application of a threshold. For small inputs, neural networks in a stationary state also perform an effectively linear input–output transformation, but of an entire time series. Choosing the temporal mean of the time series as the feature for classification, the linear transformation of the network with subsequent thresholding is equivalent to the classical perceptron. Here we show that choosing covariances of time series as the feature for classification maps the neural network to what we call a ‘covariance perceptron’; a mapping between covariances that is bilinear in terms of weights. By extending Gardner’s theory of connections to this bilinear problem, using a replica symmetric mean-field theory, we compute the pattern and information capacities of the covariance perceptron in the infinite-size limit. Closed-form expressions reveal superior pattern capacity in the binary classification task compared to the classical perceptron in the case of a high-dimensional input and low-dimensional output. For less convergent networks, the mean perceptron classifies a larger number of stimuli. However, since covariances span a much larger input and output space than means, the amount of stored information in the covariance perceptron exceeds the classical counterpart. For strongly convergent connectivity it is superior by a factor equal to the number of input neurons. Theoretical calculations are validated numerically for finite size systems using a gradient-based optimization of a soft-margin, as well as numerical solvers for the NP hard quadratically constrained quadratic programming problem, to which training can be mapped.

Constrained thermalization and topological superconductivity

We examine the thermalisation/localization trade off in an interacting and disordered Kitaev model, specifically addressing whether signatures of many-body localization can coexist with the systems topological phase. Using methods applicable to finite size systems, (e.g. the generalized one-particle density matrix, eigenstate entanglement entropy, inverse zero modes coherence length) we identify a regime of parameter space in the vicinity of the non-interacting limit where topological superconductivity survives together with a significant violation of Eigenstate-Thermalisation-Hypothesis (ETH) at finite energy-densities. We further identify an anomalous behaviour of the von Neumann entanglement entropy which can be attributed to the prethermalisation-like effects that occur due to lack of hybridization between high-energy eigenstates reflecting an approximate particle conservation law. In this regime the system tends to thermalise to a generalised Gibbs ensemble (as opposed to the grand canonical ensemble). Moderate disorder tends to drive the system towards stronger hybridization and a standard thermal ensemble, where the approximate conservation law is violated. This behaviour is cutoff by strong disorder which obstructs many body effects thus violating ETH and reducing the entanglement entropy.

Probing criticality in quantum spin chains with neural networks

The numerical emulation of quantum systems often requires an exponential number of degrees of freedom which translates to a computational bottleneck. Methods of machine learning have been used in adjacent fields for effective feature extraction and dimensionality reduction of high-dimensional datasets. Recent studies have revealed that neural networks are further suitable for the determination of macroscopic phases of matter and associated phase transitions as well as efficient quantum state representation. In this work, we address quantum phase transitions in quantum spin chains, namely the transverse field Ising chain and the anisotropic XY chain, and show that even neural networks with no hidden layers can be effectively trained to distinguish between magnetically ordered and disordered phases. Our neural network acts to predict the corresponding crossovers finite-size systems undergo. Our results extend to a wide class of interacting quantum many-body systems and illustrate the wide applicability of neural networks to many-body quantum physics.

Numerical Verification of the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem for Isolated Quantum Systems.

The fluctuation-dissipation theorem (FDT) is a hallmark of thermal equilibrium systems in the Gibbs state. We address the question whether the FDT is obeyed by isolated quantum systems in an energy eigenstate. In the framework of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, we derive the formal expression for two-time correlation functions in the energy eigenstates or in the diagonal ensemble. They satisfy the Kubo-Martin-Schwinger condition, which is the sufficient and necessary condition for the FDT, in the infinite system size limit. We also obtain the finite size correction to the FDT for finite-sized systems. With extensive numerical works for the XXZ spin chain model, we confirm our theory for the FDT and the finite size correction. Our results can serve as a guide line for an experimental study of the FDT on a finite-sized system.