Statistical Mechanical Model Research Articles

Robust Teleportation of a Surface Code and Cascade of Topological Quantum Phase Transitions

Teleportation is a facet where quantum measurements can act as a powerful resource in quantum physics, as local measurements allow us to steer quantum information in a nonlocal way. While this has long been established for a single Bell pair, the teleportation of a many-qubit entangled state using nonmaximally entangled resources presents a fundamentally different challenge. Here, we investigate a tangible protocol for teleporting a long-range entangled surface-code state using elementary Bell measurements and its stability in the presence of coherent errors that weaken the Bell entanglement. We relate the underlying threshold problem to the physics of anyon condensation under weak measurements and map it to a variant of the Ashkin-Teller model of statistical mechanics with Nishimori-type disorder, which gives rise to a cascade of phase transitions. Tuning the angle of the local Bell measurements, we find a continuously varying threshold. Notably, the threshold moves to infinity for the X+Z angle along the self-dual line—indicating that infinitesimally weak entanglement is sufficient in teleporting a self-dual topological surface code. Our teleportation protocol, which can be readily implemented in dynamically configurable Rydberg-atom arrays, thereby gives guidance for a practical demonstration of the power of quantum measurements. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Microscopic analysis of relaxation behavior in nonlinear optical conductivity of graphene

We produce a general formalism to study the interband dynamical optical conductivity in the nonlinear regime of graphene in the presence of a quantum bath comprising phonons and electrons. When a quantum solid of graphene is subjected to an intense electric field in the optical frequency range, the observation of a nonlinear response is facilitated by formulating a quantum master equation of the density operator associated with the Hamiltonian encapsulated in a spin-boson model of dissipative quantum statistical mechanics. Our results reveal the nonlinear steady-state regime’s population inversion and decoherence. The present method enables us to investigate further the nonlinear interband optical conductivity of pristine and gapped graphene characterized by a single dimensionless parameter at finite temperatures. Different bath spectra’ effects on phonons and electrons are examined in detail. The temperature dependence of conductivity reveals that changing temperature can enable us to make a transition from the linear to the nonlinear regime for fixed optical field parameters. Interestingly, a fascinating switching-like behavior is observed for the low-temperature optical conductivity of the gapped graphene while we vary the energy gap as well as the frequency of the externally applied field. Although our general formulation can address a variety of nonequilibrium responses of the two-band system, it also facilitates a connection with the phenomenological modeling of nonlinear optical conductivity.

Sequence disorder-induced first order phase transition in confined polyelectrolytes.

We consider a statistical mechanical model of a generic flexible polyelectrolyte, comprised of identically charged monomers with long-range electrostatic interactions and short-range interactions quantified by a disorder field along the polymer contour sequence, which is randomly quenched. The free energy and the monomer density profile of the system for no electrolyte screening are calculated in the case of a system composed of two infinite planar bounding surfaces with an intervening oppositely charged polyelectrolyte chain. We show that the effect of the contour sequence disorder, mediated by short-range interactions, leads to an enhanced localization of the polyelectrolyte chain and a first order phase transition at a critical value of the inter-surface spacing. This phase transition results in an abrupt change of the pressure from negative to positive values, effectively eliminating polyelectrolyte mediated bridging attraction.

Dynamic density functional theory of polymers with salt in electric fields.

We present a dynamic density functional theory for modeling the effects of applied electric fields on the local structure of polymers with added salt (polymer electrolytes). Time-dependent equations for the local electrostatic potential and volume fractions of polymer, cation, and anion of added salt are developed using the principles of linear irreversible thermodynamics. For such a development, a field theoretic description of the free energy of polymer melts doped with salts is used, which captures the effects of local variations in the dielectric function. Connections of the dynamic density functional theory with experiments are established by relating the three phenomenological Onsager's transport coefficients of the theory to the mutual diffusion of electrolyte, ionic conductivity, and transference number of one of the ions. The theory is connected with a statistical mechanical model developed by Bearman and Kirkwood [J. Chem. Phys. 28, 136 (1958)] after relating the three transport coefficients to friction coefficients. The steady-state limit of the dynamic density functional theory is used to understand the effects of dielectric inhomogeneity on the phase separation in polymer electrolytes. The theory developed here provides not only a way to connect with experiments but also to develop multi-scale models for studying connections between local structure and ion transport in polymer electrolytes.

Comparative study of multiple statistical damage mechanics models for rock behaviors under high temperature

Under the influence of external factors such as high temperature, chemical corrosion, and loading-unloading cycles, micro-cracks and pores may develop within rock structures. Continuum damage mechanics (CDM) characterizes these micro-defects arising within rocks, investigating the physico-mechanical behaviors of rocks in damaged states. This study, grounded in the theoretical framework of CDM and utilizing the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion, integrates different probability distributions and damage coupling methods to develop three statistical damage models. The investigation primarily explores the effects of strength criteria, probability functions, and damage coupling mechanisms on the statistical damage models. In addressing the complex interplay between rock micro-defects and external stressors such as high temperatures and chemical corrosion, this study leverages the principles of CDM within the Mohr-Coulomb criterion framework. It advances the field by developing three innovative statistical damage models, enriched by diverse probability distributions and damage coupling methods. The research delineates the substantial impact of strength criteria, probability functions, and damage coupling mechanisms on the behavior of these models. Notably, it achieves a synthesis of theoretical constructs and experimental validation, demonstrating the models' capacity to reflect the nuanced behaviors of damaged rock accurately. Furthermore, this investigation contributes a methodological blueprint for statistical damage model construction, underscoring the critical selection of strength criteria and probability distributions. These efforts fortify the theoretical underpinnings necessary for the enhanced engineering application of statistics-driven damage analysis.

Statistical mechanics of stochastic quantum control: d-adic Rényi circuits.

The dynamics of quantum information in many-body systems with large onsite Hilbert space dimension admits an enlightening description in terms of effective statistical mechanics models. Motivated by this fact, we reveal a connection between three separate models: the classically chaotic d-adic Rényi map with stochastic control, a quantum analog of this map for qudits, and a Potts model on a random graph. The classical model and its quantum analog share a transition between chaotic and controlled phases, driven by a randomly applied control map that attempts to order the system. In the quantum model, the control map necessitates measurements that concurrently drive a phase transition in the entanglement content of the late-time steady state. To explore the interplay of the control and entanglement transitions, we derive an effective Potts model from the quantum model and use it to probe information-theoretic quantities that witness both transitions. The entanglement transition is found to be in the bond-percolation universality class, consistent with other measurement-induced phase transitions, while the control transition is governed by a classical random walk. These two phase transitions can be made to coincide by varying a parameter in the model, producing a picture consistent with behavior observed in previous small-size numerical studies of the quantum model.

Evident structural anisotropies arising from near-zero particle asphericity in granular spherocylinder packings.

With magnetic resonance imaging experiments, we study packings of granular spherocylinders with merely 2% asphericity. Evident structural anisotropies across all length scales are identified. Most interestingly, the global nematic order decreases with increasing packing fraction, while the local contact anisotropy shows an opposing trend. We attribute this counterintuitive phenomenon to a competition between gravity-driven ordering aided by frictional contacts and a geometric frustration effect at the marginally jammed state. It is also surprising to notice that such slight particle asphericity can trigger non-negligible correlations between contact-level and mesoscale structures, manifested in drastically different nonaffine structural rearrangements upon compaction from that of granular spheres. These observations can help improve statistical mechanical models for the orientational order transformation of nonspherical granular particle packings, which involves complex interplays between particle shape, frictional contacts, and external force field.

First-principles prediction of point defect energies and concentrations in the tantalum and hafnium carbides

First-principles calculations are combined with a statistical–mechanical model to predict the equilibrium point-defect concentrations in the refractory carbides TaC and HfC as a function of temperature and chemical composition. Several different types of point defects (vacancies, interstitials, antisite atoms) and their clusters are treated in a unified manner. The defect concentrations either strictly follow or can be closely approximated by Arrhenius functions with parameters predicted by the model. The model is general and applicable to other carbides, nitrides, borides, or similar chemical compounds. Implications of this work for understanding the diffusion mechanisms in TaC and HfC are discussed.

Mathematical modelling of decision making: the case of motor insurance choices

This paper employs a statistical mechanical model as a framework to investigate how socioeconomic factors of individuals such as gender and place of residence influence their decision when deciding between comprehensive and third-party motor insurance policies in Ghana. Data from a general insurance firm was used for this investigation taking five years’ worth of transactions into account. The methods of partial least squares and the ordinary least squares are, respectively, used to estimate the parameters of the interacting and the non-interacting models in the Multipopulation Currie-Weiss model in a discrete choice framework. The findings showed that both location and gender have discernible influences on how people choose their motor insurance. We encourage insurance companies to intensify their campaign on the importance of motor insurance to all vehicle/car owners, especially those in rural areas in order to reduce the risk and associated losses in vehicular accidents on Ghanaian roads.

The star–square relation and the generalized star–triangle relation from 3d supersymmetric dualities I

We study duality transformations of the star–square relation and the generalized star–triangle relation for Ising-like lattice spin models. The lattice spin models are obtained via gauge/YBE correspondence which connects the supersymmetric gauge theories and lattice spin models of statistical mechanics. By the use of integral identities coming from the duality of three-dimensional supersymmetric gauge theories, we construct hyperbolic, lens hyperbolic, trigonometric, and rational solutions to the duality transformations. These duality transformations allow us to construct spin lattice models with four-spin (the star–square relation) and three-spin (the generalized star–triangle relation) interactions.

Spectral large deviations of sparse random matrices

AbstractEigenvalues of Wigner matrices has been a major topic of investigation. A particularly important subclass of such random matrices, useful in many applications, are what are known as sparse or diluted random matrices, where each entry in a Wigner matrix is multiplied by an independent Bernoulli random variable with mean . Alternatively, such a matrix can be viewed as the adjacency matrix of an Erdős–Rényi graph equipped with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) edge‐weights. An observable of particular interest is the largest eigenvalue. In this paper, we study the large deviations behavior of the largest eigenvalue of such matrices, a topic that has received considerable attention over the years. While certain techniques have been devised for the case when is fixed or perhaps going to zero not too fast with the matrix size, we focus on the case , that is, constant average degree regime of sparsity, which is a central example due to its connections to many models in statistical mechanics and other applications. Most known techniques break down in this regime and even the typical behavior of the spectrum of such random matrices is not very well understood. So far, results were known only for the Erdős–Rényi graph without edge‐weights and with Gaussian edge‐weights. In the present article, we consider the effect of general weight distributions. More specifically, we consider entry distributions whose tail probabilities decay at rate with , where the regimes and correspond to tails heavier and lighter than the Gaussian tail, respectively. While in many natural settings the large deviations behavior is expected to depend crucially on the entry distribution, we establish a surprising and rare universal behavior showing that this is not the case when . In contrast, in the case, the large deviation rate function is no longer universal and is given by the solution to a variational problem, the description of which involves a generalization of the Motzkin–Straus theorem, a classical result from spectral graph theory. As a byproduct of our large deviation results, we also establish the law of large numbers behavior for the largest eigenvalue, which also seems to be new and difficult to obtain using existing methods. In particular, we show that the typical value of the largest eigenvalue exhibits a phase transition at , that is, corresponding to the Gaussian distribution.

ZEROS OF PARTITION FUNCTION FOR Z5-SYMMETRIC MODEL ON SQUARE LATTICE-PARTICULAR CASE

We study a statistical mechanics model of multiple-phase transitions called the ZQ-symmetric model on the square lattice for five possible spin directions (Q = 5). This study aims to investigate the existence of phase transition(s) and discuss the distribution of partition function zeros on the complex-temperature plane. Some cases of energy list χ are considered where they are written in an arbitrary arrangement of integer numbers (usually in decreasing value due to the angle of separation). The partition functions are computed using a transfer matrix approach, and their zeros are found numerically using the NewtonRaphson method. A Monte-Carlo Metropolis simulation is then performed to study the critical point of phase transition. The results are compared to the zeros distribution of the partition functions for the considered cases. Studying this generalised model is vital to mimic the system in the real world and to help experimental works use a more sustainable approach.

Revisiting log-periodic oscillations

This work is inspired by a recent study of a two-dimensional stochastic fragmentation model. We show that the configurational entropy of this model exhibits log-periodic oscillations as a function of the sample size, by exploiting an exact recursion relation for the numbers of its jammed configurations. This is seemingly the first statistical–mechanical model where log-periodic oscillations affect the size dependence of an extensive quantity. We then propose and investigate in great depth a one-dimensional analogue of the fragmentation model. This one-dimensional model possesses a critical point, separating a strong-coupling phase where the free energy is super-extensive from a weak-coupling one where the free energy is extensive and exhibits log-periodic oscillations. This model is generalized to a family of one-dimensional models with two integer parameters, which exhibit essentially the same phenomenology.

Statistical mechanics model for Clifford random tensor networks and monitored quantum circuits

Statistical mechanics model for Clifford random tensor networks and monitored quantum circuits

A distant descendant of the six-vertex model

In this paper we present a new solution of the star-triangle relation having positive Boltzmann weights. The solution defines an exactly solvable two-dimensional Ising-type (edge interaction) model of statistical mechanics where the local “spin variables” can take arbitrary integer values, i.e., the number of possible spin states at each site of the lattice is infinite. There is also an equivalent “dual” formulation of the model, where the spins take continuous real values on the circle. From algebraic point of view this model is closely related to the 6-vertex model. It is connected with the construction of an intertwiner for two infinite-dimensional representations of the quantum affine algebra Uq(slˆ(2)) without the highest and lowest weights. The partition function of the model in the large lattice limit is calculated by the inversion relation method. Amazingly, it coincides with the partition function of the off-critical 8-vertex free-fermion model.

The relationship between anaemia and the use of treated bed nets among pregnant and non-pregnant women in Ghana.

Studies have indicated that the risk of malaria, particularly its association with anaemia in pregnant women, increases when treated bed nets are not used. This paper utilizes a statistical mechanical model to investigate whether there is a statistical relationship between the presence or absence of anaemia in pregnant and non-pregnant women and their decision to sleep under treated bed nets. Data from the Ghana Malaria Indicator Survey (GMIS), which includes both rural and urban malaria-endemic areas in Ghana, were employed in this study. A total of 2,434 women, comprising 215 pregnant and 2,219 non-pregnant participants, were involved. Among these, 4.76% of the pregnant and anaemic women and 45.89% of the non-pregnant and anaemic women slept under treated bed nets, while 0.86% of the pregnant and anaemic and 6.82% of the non-pregnant and anaemic women did not. The findings revealed that, in the absence of social interaction, non-anaemic pregnant women have a lower prevalence of choosing to use bed nets compared to their anaemic counterparts. Additionally, non-pregnant anaemic women showed a positive private incentive (30.87%) to use treated bed nets, implying a positive correlation between anaemia and the choice to sleep in a treated bed net. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that both pregnancy and anaemia status have a relationship with the use of treated bed nets in Ghana, especially when social interactions are considered. The interaction strength between non-pregnant and anaemic women interacting with each other shows a negative estimate (-1.49%), implying that there is no rewarding effect from imitation. These insights are crucial for malaria prevention and control programs, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions to enhance the use of treated bed nets among both pregnant and non-pregnant women in Ghana's malaria-endemic regions.

Tuning structure, stability and magnetism in vanadium doped zinc sulfide for spintronic applications: Insights from first-principles and Monte Carlo approaches

This work utilizes a multi-scale computational approach combining first-principles density functional theory (DFT) and Monte Carlo statistical simulations to provide fundamental insights into the impacts of vanadium (V) doping on the structural, electronic, magnetic, and thermodynamic properties of wurtzite zinc sulfide (ZnS). 2 × 2 × 2 ZnS supercells with controlled V doping concentrations from 12.5%–25% substituting zinc sites were constructed. The introduction of V dopants induces systematic expansions in lattice parameters and cell volume, attributed to the larger ionic radius of V2+ than Zn2+, while the average compressibility shows minimal variation. However, V incorporation is found to soften ZnS by over 15% at higher dopant contents, increasing compliance and anisotropy. Stable ferromagnetic spin couplings emerge, mediated by host carriers without precipitating V secondary phases. The band structure develops half-metallic electronic properties with the lifting of spin degeneracy and preferential spin-up band metallicity induced by V-3d and S-3p hybridization effects. This results in 100% spin polarization at the Fermi level. Monte Carlo simulations based on a tight-binding Hamiltonian constructed from maximally localized Wannier functions to accurately calculate the exchange interactions between V spins successfully reproduce the magnetic phase transition behavior. The results confirm high Curie temperatures exceeding 300 K at 25% V, attributable to the significant strengthening of short-range ferromagnetic couplings over antiferromagnetic interactions. The integrated computational approach provides fundamental insights into the microscopic origin of carrier-mediated ferromagnetism in V-doped wurtzite ZnS dilute magnetic semiconductors. The systematic first-principles calculations and statistical mechanics modeling establish clear structure–property relationships linking V doping configurations and concentrations to tuned mechanical response, enhanced stability, electronic structure modifications, spin polarization, and magnetic ordering temperatures in ZnS. The results present design pathways and predictive capabilities to guide experimental efforts toward emerging high-performance magnetic materials for spintronic technologies.

On different approaches to integrable lattice models

Interaction-round the face (IRF) models are two-dimensional lattice models of statistical mechanics defined by an affine Lie algebra and admissibility conditions depending on a choice of representation of that affine Lie algebra. Integrable IRF models, i.e. the models the Boltzmann weights of which satisfy the quantum Yang–Baxter equation, are of particular interest. In this paper, we investigate trigonometric Boltzmann weights of integrable IRF models. By using an ansatz proposed by one of the authors in some previous works, the Boltzmann weights of the restricted IRF models based on the affine Lie algebras su(2)k and su(3)k are computed for fundamental and adjoint representations for some fixed levels k. New solutions for the Boltzmann weights are obtained. We also study the vertex-IRF correspondence in the context of an unrestricted IRF model based on su(3)k (for general k) and discuss how it can be used to find Boltzmann weights in terms of the quantum R^ matrix when the adjoint representation defines the admissibility conditions.

The origin of Calabi-Yau crystals in BPS states counting

We study the counting problem of BPS D-branes wrapping holomorphic cycles of a general toric Calabi-Yau manifold. We evaluate the Jeffrey-Kirwan residues for the flavoured Witten index for the supersymmetric quiver quantum mechanics on the worldvolume of the D-branes, and find that BPS degeneracies are described by a statistical mechanical model of crystal melting. For Calabi-Yau threefolds, we reproduce the crystal melting models long known in the literature. For Calabi-Yau fourfolds, however, we find that the crystal does not contain the full information for the BPS degeneracy and we need to explicitly evaluate non-trivial weights assigned to the crystal configurations. Our discussions treat Calabi-Yau threefolds and fourfolds on equal footing, and include discussions on elliptic and rational generalizations of the BPS states counting, connections to the mathematical definition of generalized Donaldson-Thomas invariants, examples of wall crossings, and of trialities in quiver gauge theories.

Randomness, Integrability and Universality

In spring 2022, the Galileo Galilei Institute for Theoretical Physics hosted a seven-week Workshop on ‘Randomness, Integrability and Universality’. The Workshop addressed a series of questions on exactly solvable models of statistical mechanics, having numerous ties and overlaps with various problems in random matrix models, probability, representation theory, and combinatorics. Much recent progress in these areas exploits the underlying notion of quantum integrability. Here we report on the scientific motivations and background of this activity and on its main outputs.