Nonanalytic Dependence Research Articles

Structure and scaling of Kitaev chain across a quantum critical point in real space.

The spatial Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) is applied to the Kitaev chain with inhomogeneous pairing interactions that vanish in half of the lattice and result in a quantum critical point separating the superfluid and normal-gas phases in real space. The weakly-interacting BCS theory predicts scaling behavior of the penetration of the pair wavefunction into the normal-gas region different from conventional power-law results due to the non-analytic dependence of the BCS order parameter on the interaction. The Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equation produces numerical results confirming the scaling behavior and hints complications in the strong-interaction regime. The limiting case of the step-function quench reveals the dominance of the BCS coherence length in absence of additional length scale. Furthermore, the energy spectrum and wavefunctions from the BdG equation show abundant in-gap states from the normal-gas region in addition to the topological edge states.

Mesoscopic impurities in generalized hydrodynamics

This study focuses on the impurities in integrable models from the viewpoint of generalized hydrodynamics (GHD). An impurity can be thought of as a boundary condition for the GHD equation, relating the states on the left and right sides. It was found that, in interacting models, it is not possible to disentangle the incoming and outgoing states, which means that it is not possible to think of scattering as a mapping that maps the incoming state to the outgoing state. A novel class of impurities, dubbed mesoscopic impurities, was then introduced, whose spatial size is mesoscopic (i.e. their size Lmicro≪Limp≪L is much larger than the microscopic length scale Lmicro but much smaller than the macroscopic scale L). Because of their large size, it is possible to describe mesoscopic impurities via GHD. This simplification allows one to study these impurities both analytically and numerically. These impurities show interesting non-perturbative scattering behavior, such as the nonuniqueness of the solutions and a nonanalytic dependence on the impurity strength. In models with one quasi-particle species and a scattering phase shift that depends only on the difference in momenta, the scattering can be described using an effective Hamiltonian. This Hamiltonian is dressed due to the interaction between the particles and satisfies a self-consistency fixed-point equation. In the example of the hard-rod model, it was demonstrated how this fixed-point equation can be used to find almost explicit solutions to the scattering problem by reducing it to a two-dimensional system of equations that can be solved numerically.

Machine learning assisted derivation of minimal low-energy models for metallic magnets

We consider the problem of extracting a low-energy spin Hamiltonian from a triangular Kondo Lattice Model (KLM). The non-analytic dependence of the effective spin-spin interactions on the Kondo exchange excludes the use of perturbation theory beyond the second order. We then introduce a Machine Learning (ML) assisted protocol to extract effective two- and four-spin interactions. The resulting spin model reproduces the phase diagram of the original KLM as a function of magnetic field and single-ion anisotropy and reveals the effective four-spin interactions that stabilize the field-induced skyrmion crystal phase. Moreover, this model enables the computation of static and dynamical properties with a much lower numerical cost relative to the original KLM. A comparison of the dynamical spin structure factor in the fully polarized phase computed with both models reveals a good agreement for the magnon dispersion even though this information was not included in the training data set.

Non-Fermi-Liquid Behavior from Cavity Electromagnetic Vacuum Fluctuations at the Superradiant Transition.

We study two-dimensional materials where electrons are coupled to the vacuum electromagnetic field of a cavity. We show that, at the onset of the superradiant phase transition towards a macroscopic photon occupation of the cavity, the critical electromagnetic fluctuations, consisting of photons strongly overdamped by their interaction with electrons, can in turn lead to the absence of electronic quasiparticles. Since transverse photons couple to the electronic current, the appearance of non-Fermi-Liquid behavior strongly depends on the lattice. In particular, we find that in a square lattice the phase space for electron-photon scattering is reduced in such a way to preserve the quasiparticles, while in a honeycomb lattice the latter are removed due to a nonanalytical frequency dependence of the damping ∝|ω|^{2/3}. Standard cavity probes could allow us to measure the characteristic frequency spectrum of the overdamped critical electromagnetic modes responsible for the non-Fermi-liquid behavior.

Transition from Pauli paramagnetism to Curie-Weiss behavior in vanadium

We study electron correlations and their impact on magnetic properties of bcc vanadium by a combination of density functional and dynamical mean-field theory. The calculated uniform magnetic susceptibility {in bcc structure} is of Pauli type at low temperatures, while it obeys the Curie-Weiss law at higher temperatures. Thus, we qualitatively reproduce the experimental temperature dependence of magnetic susceptibility without introducing the martensitic phase transition. Our results for local spin-spin correlation function and local susceptibility reveal that the Curie-Weiss behavior appears due to partial formation of local magnetic moments, which originate from $t_{2g}$ states and occur due to local spin correlations caused by Hund's rule coupling. At the same time, the fermionic quasiparticles remain well-defined, while the formation of local moments is accompanied by a deviation from the Fermi-liquid behavior. In particular, the self-energy of the $t_{2g}$ states shows the non-analytic frequency dependence, which is a characteristic of the spin-freezing behavior, while the quasiparticle damping changes approximately linearly with temperature in the intermediate temperature range $200$--$700$~K. By analyzing the momentum dependence of static magnetic susceptibility, we find incommensurate magnetic correlations, which may provide a mechanism for unconventional superconductivity at low temperatures.

Instability of the ferromagnetic quantum critical point and symmetry of the ferromagnetic ground state in two-dimensional and three-dimensional electron gases with arbitrary spin-orbit splitting

In this work we revisit itinerant ferromagnetism in 2D and 3D electron gases with arbitrary spin-orbit splitting and strong electron-electron interaction. We identify the resonant scattering processes close to the Fermi surface that are responsible for the instability of the ferromagnetic quantum critical point at low temperatures. In contrast to previous theoretical studies, we show that such processes cannot be fully suppressed even in presence of arbitrary spin-orbit splitting. A fully self-consistent non-perturbative treatment of the electron-electron interaction close to the phase transition shows that these resonant processes always destabilize the ferromagnetic quantum critical point and lead to a first-order phase transition. Characteristic signatures of these processes can be measured via the non-analytic dependence of the spin susceptibility on magnetic field both far away or close to the phase transition.

Current cross correlations in a quantum Hall collider at filling factor two

We use the nonequilibrium bosonization technique to study the effects of Coulomb interactions in mesoscopic electron colliders based on quantum Hall edge states at filling factor $\ensuremath{\nu}=2$. The current cross correlations and Fano factor, which carry the information about the exclusion statistics, are calculated. It is shown that both these quantities have a nonanalytical dependence on the source transparency, which scales as $log(1/{T}_{s})$ at small ${T}_{s}\ensuremath{\ll}1$. This is a consequence of electron-electron interactions in the outgoing nonequilibrium states of the collider.

Resonantly enhanced polariton wave mixing and parametric instability in a Floquet medium.

We introduce a new theoretical approach for analyzing pump and probe experiments in non-linear systems of optical phonons. In our approach, the effect of coherently pumped polaritons is modeled as providing time-periodic modulation of the system parameters. Within this framework, propagation of the probe pulse is described by the Floquet version of Maxwell's equations and leads to phenomena such as frequency mixing and resonant parametric production of polariton pairs. We analyze light reflection from a slab of insulating material with a strongly excited phonon-polariton mode and obtain analytic expressions for the frequency-dependent reflection coefficient for the probe pulse. Our results are in agreement with recent experiments by Cartella et al. [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 115, 12148 (2018)], which demonstrated light amplification in a resonantly excited SiC insulator. We show that, beyond a critical pumping strength, such systems should exhibit Floquet parametric instability, which corresponds to resonant scattering of pump polaritons into pairs of finite momentum polaritons. We find that the parametric instability should be achievable in SiC using current experimental techniques and discuss its signatures, including the non-analytic frequency dependence of the reflection coefficient and the probe pulse afterglow. We discuss possible applications of the parametric instability phenomenon and suggest that similar types of instabilities can be present in other photoexcited non-linear systems.

Probing small-scale baryon and dark matter isocurvature perturbations with cosmic microwave background anisotropies

The Universe's initial conditions, in particular baryon and cold dark matter (CDM) isocurvature perturbations, are poorly constrained on sub-Mpc scales. In this paper, we develop a new formalism to compute the effect of small-scale baryon perturbations on the mean free-electron abundance, thus on cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. Our framework can accommodate perturbations with arbitrary time and scale dependence. We apply this formalism to four different combinations of baryon and CDM isocurvature modes, and use Planck CMB-anisotropy data to probe their initial amplitude. We find that Planck data is consistent with no small-scale isocurvature perturbations, and that this additional ingredient does not help alleviate the Hubble tension. We set upper bounds to the dimensionless initial power spectrum $\Delta_{\mathcal{I}}^2(k)$ of these isocurvature modes at comoving wavenumbers $1~\textrm{Mpc}^{-1} \le k \le 10^3$ Mpc$^{-1}$, for several parameterizations. For a scale-invariant power spectrum, our 95% confidence-level limits on $\Delta_{\mathcal{I}}^2$ are 0.023 for pure baryon isocurvature, 0.099 for pure CDM isocurvature, 0.026 for compensated baryon-CDM perturbations, and 0.009 for joint baryon-CDM isocurvature perturbations. Using a Fisher analysis generalized to non-analytic parameter dependence, we forecast that a CMB Stage-4 experiment would be able to probe small-scale isocurvature perturbations with initial power 3 to 10 times smaller than Planck limits. The formalism introduced in this work is very general and can be used more widely to probe any physical processes or initial conditions sourcing small-scale baryon perturbations.

Hydrodynamic fluctuations and long-time tails in a fluid on an anisotropic background

The effective low-energy late-time description of many body systems near thermal equilibrium provided by classical hydrodynamics in terms of dissipative transport phenomena receives important corrections once the effects of stochastic fluctuations are taken into account. One such physical effect is the occurrence of long-time power law tails in correlation functions of conserved currents. In the hydrodynamic regime k→0 this amounts to non-analytic dependence of the correlation functions on the frequency ω. In this article, we consider a relativistic fluid with a conserved global U(1) charge in the presence of a strong background magnetic field, and compute the long-time tails in correlation functions of the stress tensor. The presence of the magnetic field renders the system anisotropic. In the absence of the magnetic field, there are three out-of-equilibrium transport parameters that arise at the first order in the hydrodynamic derivative expansion, all of which are dissipative. In the presence of a background magnetic field, there are ten independent out-of-equilibrium transport parameters at the first order, three of which are non-dissipative and the rest are dissipative. We provide the most general linearized equations about a given state of thermal equilibrium involving the various transport parameters in the presence of a magnetic field, and use them to compute the long-time tails for the fluid.

Perturbative instability of nonergodic phases in non-Abelian quantum chains

An important challenge in the field of many-body quantum dynamics is to identify nonergodic states of matter beyond many-body localization (MBL). Strongly disordered spin chains with non-Abelian symmetry and chains of non-Abelian anyons are natural candidates, as they are incompatible with standard MBL. In such chains, real space renormalization group methods predict a partially localized, nonergodic regime known as a quantum critical glass (a critical variant of MBL). This regime features a treelike hierarchy of integrals of motion and symmetric eigenstates with entanglement entropy that scales as a logarithmically enhanced area law. We argue that such tentative nonergodic states are perturbatively unstable using an analytic computation of the scaling of off-diagonal matrix elements and accessible level spacing of local perturbations. Our results indicate that strongly disordered chains with non-Abelian symmetry display either spontaneous symmetry breaking or ergodic thermal behavior at long times. We identify the relevant length and timescales for thermalization: Even if such chains eventually thermalize, they can exhibit nonergodic dynamics up to parametrically long timescales with a nonanalytic dependence on disorder strength.

Nonanalytic momentum dependence of spin susceptibility for Heisenberg magnets in the paramagnetic phase and its effect on critical exponents

We study momentum dependence of static magnetic susceptibility $\chi(q)$ in paramagnetic phase of Heisenberg magnets and its relation to critical behavior within nonlinear sigma model (NLSM) at arbitrary dimension $2<d<4$. In the first order of $1/N$ expansion, where $N$ is the number of spin components, we find $\chi(q)\propto[q^{2}+\xi^{-2}(1+f(q\xi ))]^{-1+\eta /2}$, where $\xi $ is the correlation length, $q$ is the momentum, measured from magnetic wave vector, the universal scaling function $f(x)$ describes deviation from the standard Landau-Ginzburg momentum dependence. In agreement with previous studies at large $x$ we find $f(x\gg 1)\simeq (2B_{4}/N)x^{4-d}$; the absolute value of the coefficient $B_4$ increases with $d$ at $d>5/2$. Using NLSM, we obtain the contribution of the"anomalous" term $\xi^{-2}f(q\xi )$ to the critical exponent $\nu $, comparing it to the contribution of the non-analytical dependence, originating from the critical exponent $\eta $ (the obtained critical exponents $\nu $ and $\eta $ agree with previous studies). In the range $3\leq d<4$ we find that the former contribution dominates, and fully determines $1/N$ correction to the critical exponent $\nu $ in the limit $d\rightarrow 4.$

Nonlocal hydrodynamic transport and collective excitations in Dirac fluids

We study the response of a Dirac fluid to electric fields and thermal gradients at finite wave-numbers and frequencies in the hydrodynamic regime. We find that non-local transport in the hydrodynamic regime is governed by infinite set of kinetic modes that describe non-collinear scattering events in different angular harmonic channels. The scattering rates of these modes $\tau_{m}^{-1}$ increase as $\|m\|$, where $m$ labels the angular harmonics. In an earlier publication, we pointed out that this dependence leads to anomalous, L\'evy-flight-like phase space diffusion (Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 195302 (2019)). Here, we show how this surprisingly simple, non-analytic dependence allows us to obtain exact expressions for the non-local charge and electronic thermal conductivities. The peculiar dependence of the scattering rates on $m$ also leads to a non-trivial structure of collective excitations: Besides the well known plasmon, second sound and diffusive modes, we find non-degenerate damped modes corresponding to excitations of higher angular harmonics. We use these results to investigate the transport of a Dirac fluid through Poiseuille-type geometries of different widths, and to study the response to surface acoustic waves in graphene-piezoelectric devices.

Fluctuation dynamics in a relativistic fluid with a critical point

To describe dynamics of bulk and fluctuations near the QCD critical point we develop general relativistic fluctuation formalism for a fluid carrying baryon charge. Feedback of fluctuations modifies hydrodynamic coefficients including bulk viscosity and conductivity and introduces nonlocal and noninstantaneous terms in constitutive equations. We perform necessary ultraviolet (short-distance) renormalization to obtain cutoff-independent deterministic equations suitable for numerical implementation. We use the equations to calculate the universal nonanalytic small-frequency dependence of transport coefficients due to fluctuations (long-time tails). Focusing on the critical mode we show how this general formalism matches existing $\text{Hydro+}$ description of fluctuations near the QCD critical point and nontrivially extends it inside and outside of the critical region.

Quench, thermalization, and residual entropy across a non-Fermi liquid to Fermi liquid transition

We study the thermalization, after sudden and slow quenches, of an interacting model having a quantum phase transition from a Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) non-Fermi liquid (NFL) to a Fermi liquid (FL). The model has SYK fermions coupled to non-interacting lead fermions and can be realized in a graphene flake connected to external leads. After a sudden quench to the NFL, a thermal state is reached rapidly via collapse-revival oscillations of the quasiparticle residue of the lead fermions. In contrast, the quench to the FL, across the NFL-FL transition, leads to multiple prethermal regimes and much slower thermalization. In the slow quench performed over a time $\tau$, we find that the excitation energy generated has a remarkable intermediate-$\tau$ non-analytic power-law dependence, $\tau^{-\eta}$ with $\eta<1$, which seemingly masks the dynamical manifestation of the initial residual entropy of the SYK fermions. The power-law scaling is expected to eventually break down for $\tau\to\infty$, signaling a violation of adiabaticity, due to the residual entropy present in the SYK fermions.

High-temperature expansion of the viscosity in interacting quantum gases

We compute the frequency-dependent shear and bulk viscosity spectral functions of an interacting Fermi gas in a quantum virial expansion up to second quadratic order in the fugacity parameter $z=e^{\beta \mu}$, which is small at high temperatures. Calculations are carried out using a diagrammatic finite-temperature field-theoretic framework, in which the analytic continuation from Matsubara to real frequencies is carried out in closed analytic form. Besides a possible zero-frequency Drude peak, our results for the spectral functions show a broad continuous spectrum at all frequencies with an additional bound-state contribution for frequencies larger than the dimer-breaking energy. Our results are consistent with various sum rules and universal high-frequency tails. In the low-frequency limit, the shear viscosity spectral function is recast as a collision integral, which reproduces known results for the static shear viscosity from kinetic theory. Our findings for the static bulk viscosity of a Fermi gas near unitarity, however, show a nonanalytic dependence on the scattering length, at variance with kinetic theory.

Chiral current-phase relation of topological Josephson junctions: A signature of the 4π -periodic Josephson effect

The $4\ensuremath{\pi}$-periodic Josephson effect is an indicator of Majorana zero modes and a ground-state degeneracy which are central to topological quantum computation. However, the observability of a $4\ensuremath{\pi}$-periodic Josephson current-phase relation (CPR) is hindered by the necessity to fix the fermionic parity. As an alternative to a $4\ensuremath{\pi}$-periodic CPR, this paper proposes a chiral CPR for the $4\ensuremath{\pi}$-periodic Josephson effect. This is a CPR of the form $J(\ensuremath{\phi})\ensuremath{\propto}C\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}|sin(\ensuremath{\phi}/2)|$, describing a unidirectional supercurrent with the chirality $C=\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1$. Its nonanalytic dependence on the Josephson phase difference $\ensuremath{\phi}$ translates into the $4\ensuremath{\pi}$-periodic CPR $J(\ensuremath{\phi})\ensuremath{\propto}sin(\ensuremath{\phi}/2)$. The proposal requires a spin-polarized topological Josephson junction which is modeled here as a short link between spin-split superconducting channels at the edge of a two-dimensional topological insulator. In this case, $C$ coincides with the Chern number of the occupied spin band of the topological insulator. This paper details three scenarios of achieving a chiral CPR: By only Zeeman-like splitting, by Zeeman splitting combined with bias currents, and by an external out-of-plane magnetic field.

Time-dependent dynamics of the three-dimensional driven lattice Lorentz gas

We consider the motion of a single tracer particle on a three-dimensional lattice in the presence of hard, immobile obstacles at low density. Starting from an equilibrium state, a constant pulling force on the tracer particle is switched on. We elaborate a complete solution for the dynamics, exact in first order of the obstacle density. The time-dependent velocity response and the fluctuations along and perpendicular to the force are derived and compared to stochastic simulations. The non-analytic dependence of the linear-response functions on the frequency, reflecting the long-time tail of the velocity autocorrelation function in equilibrium, has a non-equilibrium analogue in the non-analytic dependence of the stationary velocity as well as the diffusion coefficients as a function of the force. We show that a divergent time scale emerges, separating a regime where linear response is qualitatively correct from a regime where nonlinear effects dominate.

Entropy Driven Phase Transition in Polymer Gels: Mean Field Theory.

We present a mean field model of a gel consisting of P polymers, each of length L and Nz polyfunctional monomers. Each polyfunctional monomer forms z covalent bonds with the 2P bifunctional monomers at the ends of the linear polymers. We find that the entropy dependence on the number of polyfunctional monomers exhibits an abrupt change at Nz = 2P/z due to the saturation of possible crosslinks. This non-analytical dependence of entropy on the number of polyfunctionals generates a first-order phase transition between two gel phases: one poor and the other rich in poly-functional molecules.

Nonanalytic crossover behavior of SU(Nc) Fermi liquid

We consider the thermodynamic potential of a dilute Fermi gas with a contact interaction, at both finite temperature $T$ and non-zero effective magnetic fields $\mathbf{H}$, and derive the equation of state analytically using second order perturbation theory. Special attention is paid to the non-analytic dependence of $\Omega$ on temperature $T$ and (effective) magnetic field $\mathbf{H}$, which exhibits a crossover behavior as the ratio of the two is continuously varied. This non-analyticity is due to the particle-hole pair excitation being always gapless and long-ranged. The non-analytic crossover found in this paper can therefore be understood as an analog of the Ginzberg-Landau critical scaling, albeit only at the sub-leading order. We extend our results to an $\mathcal{N}_c$- component Fermi gas with an $\mathrm{SU}(\mathcal{N}_c)$-symmetric interaction, and point out possible enhancement of the crossover behavior by a large $\mathcal{N}_c$.