One-dimensional Fermi Research Articles

Quantum anomaly and thermodynamics of one-dimensional fermions with antisymmetric two-body interactions

A system of two-species, one-dimensional fermions, with an attractive two-body interaction of the derivative-delta type, features a scale anomaly. In contrast to the well-known two-dimensional case with contact interactions, and its one-dimensional cousin with three-body interactions (studied recently by some of us and others), the present case displays dimensional transmutation featuring a power-law rather than a logarithmic behavior. We use both the Schrödinger equation and quantum field theory to study bound and scattering states, showing consistency between both approaches. We show that the expressions for the reflection (R) and the transmission (T) coefficients of the renormalized, anomalous derivative-delta potential are identical to those of the regular delta potential. The second-order virial coefficient is calculated analytically using the Beth–Uhlenbeck formula, and we make comments about the proper ϵB→0 (where ϵB is the bound-state energy) limit. We show the impact of the quantum anomaly (which appears as the binding energy of the two-body problem, or equivalently as Tan’s contact) on the equation of state and on other universal relations. Our emphasis throughout is on the conceptual and structural aspects of this problem.

Field-theoretical aspects of one-dimensional Bose and Fermi gases with contact interactions

We investigate local quantum field theories for one-dimensional (1D) Bose and Fermi gases with contact interactions, which are closely connected with each other by Girardeau's Bose-Fermi mapping. While the Lagrangian for bosons includes only a two-body interaction, a marginally relevant three-body interaction term is found to be necessary for fermions. Because of this three-body coupling, the three-body contact characterizing a local triad correlation appears in the energy relation for fermions, which is one of the sum rules for a momentum distribution. In addition, we apply in both systems the operator product expansion to derive large-energy and momentum asymptotics of a dynamic structure factor and a single-particle spectral density. These behaviors are universal in the sense that they hold for any 1D scattering length at any temperature. The asymptotics for the Tonks-Girardeau gas, which is a Bose gas with a hardcore repulsion, as well as the Bose-Fermi correspondence in the presence of three-body attractions are also discussed.

Kinetic Processes in Fermi–Luttinger Liquids

In this work we discuss extensions of the pioneering analysis by Dzyaloshinskii and Larkin of correlation functions for one-dimensional Fermi systems, focusing on the effects of quasiparticle relaxation enabled by a nonlinear dispersion. Throughout the work we employ both, the weakly interacting Fermi gas picture and nonlinear Luttinger liquid theory to describe attenuation of excitations and explore the fermion-boson duality between both approaches. Special attention is devoted to the role of spin-exchange processes, effects of interaction screening, and integrability. Thermalization rates for electron- and hole-like quasiparticles, as well as the decay rate of collective plasmon excitations and the momentum space mobility of spin excitations are calculated for various temperature regimes. The phenomenon of spin-charge drag is considered and the corresponding momentum transfer rate is determined. We further discuss how momentum relaxation due to several competing mechanisms, viz. triple electron collisions, electron-phonon scattering, and long-range inhomogeneities affect transport properties, and highlight energy transfer facilitated by plasmons from the perspective of the inhomogeneous Luttinger liquid model. Finally, we derive the full matrix of thermoelectric coefficients at the quantum critical point of the first conductance plateau transition, and address magnetoconductance in ballistic semiconductor nanowires with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling.

One-Dimensional Metal Embedded in Two-Dimensional Semiconductor in Nb2Six-1Te4.

The ternary van der Waals material Nb2Six-1Te4 demonstrates many interesting properties as the content of Si is changed, ranging from metallic Nb3SiTe6 (x = 5/3) to narrow-gap semiconductor Nb2SiTe4 (x = 2) and with the emergence of one-dimensional Dirac fermion excitations in between. An in-depth understanding of their properties with different stoichiometry is important. Here we use scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy to reveal that Nb2Six-1Te4 is a system with spontaneously developed and self-aligned one-dimensional metallic chains embedded in a two-dimensional semiconductor. Electron quasiparticles form one- and two-dimensional standing waves side by side. This special microscopic structure results in strong transport anisotropy. Along the chain direction the material behaves like a metal, while perpendicular to the chain direction, it behaves like a semiconductor. These findings provide an important basis for further investigation of this intriguing system.

Effective free-fermionic form factors and the XY spin chain

We introduce effective form factors for one-dimensional lattice fermions with arbitrary phase shifts. We study tau functions defined as series of these form factors. On the one hand we perform the exact summation and present tau functions as Fredholm determinants in the thermodynamic limit. On the other hand simple expressions of form factors allow us to present the corresponding series as integrals of elementary functions. Using this approach we re-derive the asymptotics of static correlation functions of the XY quantum chain at finite temperature.

Non-unitary dynamics of Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev chain

We construct a series of one-dimensional non-unitary dynamics consisting of both unitary and imaginary evolutions based on the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. Starting from a short-range entangled state, we analyze the entanglement dynamics using the path integral formalism in the large N limit. Among all the results that we obtain, two of them are particularly interesting: (1) By varying the strength of the imaginary evolution, the interacting model exhibits a first order phase transition from the highly entangled volume law phase to an area law phase; (2) The one-dimensional free fermion model displays an extensive critical regime with emergent two-dimensional conformal symmetry.

Quantum anomaly, non-Hermitian skin effects, and entanglement entropy in open systems

We investigate the roles of non-Hermitian topology in spectral properties and entanglement structures of open systems. In terms of spectral theory, we give a unified understanding of two interpretations of non-Hermitian topology: quantum anomaly and non-Hermitian skin effects, in which the bulk spectra extremely depend on the boundary conditions. In this context, the fact that the intrinsic higher-dimensional skin effects under the full open boundary condition need the presence of the topological defects is understood in terms of the anomalous fermion production such as the Rubakov-Callan effect in the presence of the magnetic monopole. In terms of the entanglement structure, we investigate steady states of fermionic open systems whose Liouvillian (rapidity) spectra host non-Hermitian topology. We analyze dissipation-driven Majorana steady states in zero-dimensional open systems and relate them to the Majorana edge modes of topological superconductors by using the entanglement entropy. We also analyze a steady state of a one-dimensional open Fermi system with a non-Hermitian topological spectrum and relate it to the chiral edge states of the Chern insulator on the basis of the trace index defined from the entanglement spectrum. These correspondences indicate that the entanglement generates circular nonreciprocal currents under the periodic boundary condition and the skin-effect voltage with fermion accumulation under the open boundary condition. Finally, we discuss several related topics such as pseudospectral behaviors of Liouvillian dynamics and skin effects in interacting systems.

Discretized quantum adiabatic process for free fermions and comparison with the imaginary-time evolution

Motivated by recent progress of quantum technologies, we study a discretized quantum adiabatic process for a one-dimensional free fermion system described by a variational wave function, i.e., a parametrized quantum circuit. The wave function is composed of $M$ layers of two elementary sets of time-evolution operators, each set being decomposed into commutable local operators. The evolution time of each time-evolution operator is treated as a variational parameter so as to minimize the expectation value of the energy. We show that the exact ground state is reached by applying the layers of time-evolution operators as many as a quarter of the system size. This is the minimum number $M_B$ of layers set by the limit of speed, i.e., the Lieb-Robinson bound, for propagating quantum entanglement via the local time-evolution operators. Quantities such as the energy $E$ and the entanglement entropy $S$ of the optimized variational wave function with $M < M_B$ are independent of the system size $L$ but fall into some universal functions of $M$. The development of the entanglement in these ansatz is further manifested in the progressive propagation of single-particle orbitals in the variational wave function. We also find that the optimized variational parameters show a systematic structure that provides the optimum scheduling function in the quantum adiabatic process. We also investigate the imaginary-time evolution of this variational wave function, where the causality relation is absent due to the non-unitarity of the imaginary-time evolution operators, thus the norm of the wave function being no longer conserved. We find that the convergence to the exact ground state is exponentially fast, despite that the system is at the critical point, suggesting that implementation of the non-unitary imaginary-time evolution in a quantum circuit is highly promising to further shallow the circuit depth.

KINETIC PROCESSES IN FERMI-LUTTINGER LIQUIDS

In this work we discuss extensions of the pioneering analysis by Dzyaloshinskii and Larkin of correlation functions for one-dimensional Fermi systems, focusing on the effects of quasiparticle relaxation enabled by a nonlinear dispersion. Throughout the work we employ both, the weakly interacting Fermi gas picture and nonlinear Luttinger liquid theory to describe attenuation of excitations and explore the fermion-boson duality between both approaches. Special attention is devoted to the role of spin-exchange processes, effects of interaction screening, and integrability. Thermalization rates for electron- and hole-like quasiparticles, as well as the decay rate of collective plasmon excitations and the momentum space mobility of spin excitations are calculated for various temperature regimes. The phenomenon of spin-charge drag is considered and the corresponding momentum transfer rate is determined. We further discuss how momentum relaxation due to several competing mechanisms, viz. triple electron collisions, electron-phonon scattering, and long-range inhomogeneities affect transport properties, and highlight energy transfer facilitated by plasmons from the perspective of the inhomogeneous Luttinger liquid model. Finally, we derive the full matrix of thermoelectric coefficients at the quantum critical point of the first conductance plateau transition, and address magnetoconductance in ballistic semiconductor nanowires with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling.

The classification of symmetry protected topological phases of one-dimensional fermion systems

Abstract We introduce an index for symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases of infinite fermionic chains with an on-site symmetry given by a finite group G. This index takes values in $\mathbb {Z}_2 \times H^1(G,\mathbb {Z}_2) \times H^2(G, U(1)_{\mathfrak {p}})$ with a generalised Wall group law under stacking. We show that this index is an invariant of the classification of SPT phases. When the ground state is translation invariant and has reduced density matrices with uniformly bounded rank on finite intervals, we derive a fermionic matrix product representative of this state with on-site symmetry.

Quantum anomaly and thermodynamics of one-dimensional fermions with antisymmetric two-body interactions

Quantum anomaly and thermodynamics of one-dimensional fermions with antisymmetric two-body interactions

Entanglement entropy of fermions from Wigner functions: Excited states and open quantum systems

We formulate a new ``Wigner characteristics''-based method to calculate entanglement entropies of subsystems of Fermions using Keldysh field theory. This bypasses the requirements of working with complicated manifolds for calculating R\'enyi entropies for many-body systems. We provide an exact analytic formula for R\'enyi and von Neumann entanglement entropies of noninteracting open quantum systems, which are initialized in arbitrary Fock states. We use this formalism to look at entanglement entropies of momentum Fock states of one-dimensional Fermions. We show that the entanglement entropy of a Fock state can scale either logarithmically or linearly with subsystem size, depending on whether the number of discontinuities in the momentum distribution is smaller or larger than the subsystem size. We also use this formalism to describe entanglement dynamics of an open quantum system starting with a single domain wall at the center of the system. Using entanglement entropy and mutual information, we understand the dynamics in terms of coherent motion of the domain wall wavefronts, creation and annihilation of domain walls, and incoherent exchange of particles with the bath.

Certified variational quantum algorithms for eigenstate preparation

Solutions to many-body problem instances often involve an intractable number of degrees of freedom and admit no known approximations in general form. In practice, representing quantum-mechanical states of a given Hamiltonian using available numerical methods, in particular those based on variational Monte Carlo simulations, become exponentially more challenging with increasing system size. Recently quantum algorithms implemented as variational models have been proposed to accelerate such simulations. The variational ansatz states are characterized by a polynomial number of parameters devised in a way to minimize the expectation value of a given Hamiltonian, which is emulated by local measurements. In this study, we develop a means to certify the termination of variational algorithms. We demonstrate our approach by applying it to three models: the transverse field Ising model, the model of one-dimensional spinless fermions with competing interactions, and the Schwinger model of quantum electrodynamics. By means of comparison, we observe that our approach shows better performance near critical points in these models. We hence take a further step to improve the applicability and to certify the results of variational quantum simulators.

Emergence and Disruption of Spin-Charge Separation in One-Dimensional Repulsive Fermions.

At low temperature, collective excitations of one-dimensional (1D) interacting fermions exhibit spin-charge separation, a unique feature predicted by the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory, but a rigorous understanding remains challenging. Using the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz (TBA) formalism, we analytically derive universal properties of a 1D repulsive spin-1/2 Fermi gas with arbitrary interaction strength. We show how spin-charge separation emerges from the exact TBA formalism, and how it is disrupted by the interplay between the two degrees of freedom that brings us beyond the TLL paradigm. Based on the exact low-lying excitation spectra, we further evaluate the spin and charge dynamical structure factors (DSFs). The peaks of the DSFs exhibit distinguishable propagating velocities of spin and charge as functions of interaction strength, which can be observed by Bragg spectroscopy with ultracold atoms.

Sound in a system of chiral one-dimensional fermions

We consider a system of one-dimensional fermions moving in one direction, such as electrons at the edge of a quantum Hall system. At sufficiently long time scales the system is brought to equilibrium by weak interactions between the particles, which conserve their total number, energy, and momentum. Time evolution of the system near equilibrium is described by hydrodynamics based on the three conservation laws. We find that the system supports three sound modes. In the low temperature limit one mode is a pure oscillation of particle density, analogous to the ordinary sound. The other two modes involve oscillations of both particle and entropy densities. In the presence of disorder, the first sound mode is strongly damped at frequencies below the momentum relaxation rate, whereas the other two modes remain weakly damped.

Fermion parity gap and exponential ground state degeneracy of the one-dimensional Fermi gas with intrinsic attractive interaction

We examine the properties of a one-dimensional (1D) Fermi gas with attractive intrinsic (Hubbard) interactions in the presence of spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman field by numerically computing the pair binding energy, excitation gap, and susceptibility to local perturbations using the density matrix renormalization group. Such a system can, in principle, be realized in a system of ultracold atoms confined in a 1D optical lattice. We note that, in the presence of spatial interfaces introduced by a smooth parabolic potential, the pair binding and excitation energy of the system decays exponentially with the system size, pointing to the existence of an exponential ground state degeneracy, and is consistent with recent works. However, the susceptibility of the ground state degeneracy of this number-conserving system to local impurities indicates that the energy gap vanishes as a power law with the system size in the presence of local perturbations. We compare this system with the more familiar system of an Ising antiferromagnet in the presence of a transverse field realized with Rydberg atoms and argue that the exponential splitting in the clean number-conserving 1D Fermi system is similar to a phase with only conventional order.

Thermodynamics and static response of anomalous one-dimensional fermions via a quantum Monte Carlo approach in the worldline representation

A system of three-species fermions in one spatial dimension (1D) with a contact three-body interaction is known to display a scale anomaly. This anomaly is identical to that of a two-dimensional (2D) system of two-species fermions. The exact relation between those two systems, however, is limited to the two-particle sector of the 2D case and the three-particle sector of the 1D case. Here, we implement a non-perturbative Monte Carlo approach, based on the worldline representation, to calculate the thermodynamics and static response of three-species fermions in 1D, thus tackling the many-body sector of the problem. We determine the energy, density, and pressure equations of state, and the compressibility and magnetic susceptibility for a wide range of temperatures and coupling strengths. We compare our results with the third-order virial expansion.

Effect of mediated interactions on a Hubbard chain in mixed-dimensional fermionic cold atoms

Cold atom experiments can now realize mixtures where different components move in different spatial dimensions. We investigate a fermion mixture where one species is constrained to move along a one-dimensional lattice embedded in a two-dimensional lattice populated by another species of fermions, and where all bare interactions are contact interactions. By focusing on the one-dimensional fermions, we map this problem onto a model of fermions with non-local interactions on a chain. The effective interaction is mediated by the two-dimensional fermions and is both attractive and retarded, the form of which can be varied by changing the density of the two-dimensional fermions. By using the functional renormalization group in the weak-coupling and adiabatic limit, we show that the one-dimensional fermions can be controlled to be in various density-wave, or spin-singlet or triplet superconducting phases.

Relaxation of the degenerate one-dimensional Fermi gas

We study how a system of one-dimensional spin-1/2 fermions at temperatures well below the Fermi energy approaches thermal equilibrium. The interactions between fermions are assumed to be weak and are accounted for within the perturbation theory. In the absence of an external magnetic field, spin degeneracy strongly affects relaxation of the Fermi gas. For sufficiently short-range interactions, the rate of relaxation scales linearly with temperature. Focusing on the case of the system near equilibrium, we linearize the collision integral and find exact solution of the resulting relaxation problem. We discuss the application of our results to the evaluation of the transport coefficients of the one-dimensional Fermi gas.

Large-momentum tail of one-dimensional Fermi gases with spin-orbit coupling

We study the contacts, large-momentum tail, radio-frequency spectroscopy, and some other universal relations for an ultracold one-dimensional (1D) two-component Fermi gas with spin-orbit coupling (SOC). Different from previous studies, we find that the $q^{-8}$ tail in the spin-mixing (off-diagonal) terms of the momentum distribution matrix is dependent on the two SOC parameters in the laboratory frame for 1D systems, where $q$ is the relative momentum. This tail can be observed through time-of-flight measurement as a direct manifestation of the SOC effects on the many-body level. Besides the traditional 1D even-wave scattering length, we find that two new physical quantities must be introduced due to the SOC. Consequently, two new adiabatic energy relations with respect to the two SOC parameters are obtained. Furthermore, we derive the pressure relation and virial theorem at short distances for this system. To find how the SOC modifies the large-momentum behavior, we take the SOC parameters as perturbations since the strength of the SOC should be much smaller than the corresponding strength scale of the interatomic interactions. In addition, by using the operator product expansion method, we derive the asymptotic behavior of the large-momentum distribution matrix up to the $q^{-8}$ order and find that the diagonal terms of the distribution matrix include the contact of traditional 1D even-wave scattering length as the leading term and the SOC modified terms beyond the leading term, the off-diagonal term is beyond the subleading term and is corrected by the SOC parameters. We also find that the momentum distribution matrix shows spin-dependent and anisotropic features. Furthermore, we calculate the momentum distribution matrix in the laboratory frame for the experimental implication.