Free Fermion System Research Articles

Exact quench dynamics of symmetry resolved entanglement in a free fermion chain

The study of the entanglement dynamics plays a fundamental role in understanding the behaviour of many-body quantum systems out of equilibrium. In the presence of a globally conserved charge, further insights are provided by the knowledge of the resolution of entanglement in the various symmetry sectors. Here, we carry on the program we initiated in Parez et al (2021 Phys. Rev. B 103 L041104), for the study of the time evolution of the symmetry resolved entanglement in free fermion systems. We complete and extend our derivations also by defining and quantifying a symmetry resolved mutual information. The entanglement entropies display a time delay that depends on the charge sector that we characterise exactly. Both entanglement entropies and mutual information show effective equipartition in the scaling limit of large time and subsystem size. Furthermore, we argue that the behaviour of the charged entropies can be quantitatively understood in the framework of the quasiparticle picture for the spreading of entanglement, and hence we expect that a proper adaptation of our results should apply to a large class of integrable systems. We also find that the number entropy grows logarithmically with time before saturating to a value proportional to the logarithm of the subsystem size.

Entanglement of local operators and the butterfly effect

We study the robustness of quantum and classical information to perturbations implemented by local operator insertions. We do this by computing multipartite entanglement measures in the Hilbert space of local operators in the Heisenberg picture. The sensitivity to initial conditions that we explore is an illuminating manifestation of the butterfly effect in quantum many-body systems. We present a ``membrane theory'' in Haar random unitary circuits to compute the mutual information, logarithmic negativity, and reflected entropy in the local operator state by mapping to a classical statistical mechanics problem and find that any local operator insertion delocalizes information as fast as is allowed by causality after taking the large local Hilbert space dimension limit. Identical behavior is found for conformal field theories admitting holographic duals where the bulk geometry is described by the eternal black hole with a local object situated at the horizon. In contrast to these maximal scramblers, only an $O(1)$ amount of information is found to be delocalized by local operators in free fermionic systems and random Clifford circuits.

Absolutely Continuous Edge Spectrum of Hall Insulators on the Lattice

The presence of chiral modes on the edges of quantum Hall samples is essential to our understanding of the quantum Hall effect. In particular, these edge modes should support ballistic transport and therefore, in a single particle picture, be supported in the absolutely continuous spectrum of the single-particle Hamiltonian. We show in this note that if a free fermion system on the two-dimensional lattice is gapped in the bulk, and has a nonvanishing Hall conductance, then the same system put on a half-space geometry supports edge modes whose spectrum fills the entire bulk gap and is absolutely continuous.

Majorana orthogonal transformation and Majorana zero modes in free fermionic systems

We study free fermionic models that host Majorana zero modes using the Majorana orthogonal transformation, which is a type of transformation between different fermionic models under Majorana representation of complex fermions. Using Majorana orthogonal transformation, a U(1) topological gauge theory for the doubled px+ipy topological superconductor is obtained; the vortex Majorana zero modes and the degeneracy splitting of multiple vortices are studied using field theoretical method. For lattice Majorana hopping models, we perform real-space analysis on the Majorana zero modes. In one dimension, the decoupled Su–Schrieffer–Heeger model and the Kitaev chain are discussed as examples and building blocks for composite models. In two dimensions a simple lattice model realizing the px+ipy superconductor is introduced, and its defect Majorana zero mode is written down explicitly. We introduce a systematic way to obtain models hosting Majorana zero modes in which composite models are constructed from two independent Majorana hopping models by Majorana orthogonal transformations. Three one-dimensional models are proposed and discussed as examples.

Symmetry decomposition of negativity of massless free fermions

We consider the problem of symmetry decomposition of the entanglement negativity in free fermionic systems. Rather than performing the standard partial transpose, we use the partial time-reversal transformation which naturally encodes the fermionic statistics. The negativity admits a resolution in terms of the charge imbalance between the two subsystems. We introduce a normalised version of the imbalance resolved negativity which has the advantage to be an entanglement proxy for each symmetry sector, but may diverge in the limit of pure states for some sectors. Our main focus is then the resolution of the negativity for a free Dirac field at finite temperature and size. We consider both bipartite and tripartite geometries and exploit conformal field theory to derive universal results for the charge imbalance resolved negativity. To this end, we use a geometrical construction in terms of an Aharonov-Bohm-like flux inserted in the Riemann surface defining the entanglement. We interestingly find that the entanglement negativity is always equally distributed among the different imbalance sectors at leading order. Our analytical findings are tested against exact numerical calculations for free fermions on a lattice.

Boundary-obstructed topological phases

Symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases are gapped phases of matter that cannot be deformed to a trivial phase without breaking the symmetry or closing the bulk gap. Here, we introduce a new notion of a topological obstruction that is not captured by bulk energy gap closings in periodic boundary conditions. More specifically, we say two bulk Hamiltonians belong to distinct boundary obstructed topological `phases' (BOTPs) if they can be deformed to each other on a system with periodic boundaries, but cannot be deformed to each other for symmetric open boundaries without closing the gap at at least one high symmetry region on the surface. BOTPs are not topological phases of matter in the standard sense since they are adiabatically deformable to each other on a torus but, similar to SPTs, they are associated with boundary signatures in open systems such as surface states or fractional corner or hinge charges. We show that the double-mirror quadrupole model of [Science, 357(6346), 2018] is a prototypical example of such phases, and present a detailed analysis of several aspects of boundary obstructions in this model. In addition, we introduce several three-dimensional models having boundary obstructions, which are characterized either by surface states or fractional corner or hinge charges. We also provide a general framework to study boundary obstructions in free-fermion systems in terms of Wannier band representations (WBR), an extension of the recently-developed band representation formalism to Wannier bands. WBRs capture the notion of topological obstructions in the Wannier bands which can then be used to study topological obstructions in the boundary spectrum by means of the correspondence between the Wannier and boundary spectra. This establishes a form of bulk-boundary correspondence for BOTPs by relating the bulk band representation to the boundary topology.

Heisenberg spin chain as a worldsheet coordinate for lightcone quantized string

Although the energy spectrum of the Heisenberg spin chain on a circle defined byH=14∑k=1Mσkxσk+1x+σkyσk+1y+Δσkzσk+1z\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsmath}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{wasysym}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsfonts}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amssymb}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsbsy}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{mathrsfs}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{upgreek}\t\t\t\t\\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\t\t\t\t\\begin{document}$$ H=\\frac{1}{4}\\sum \\limits_{k=1}^M\\left({\\sigma}_k^x{\\sigma}_{k+1}^x+{\\sigma}_k^y{\\sigma}_{k+1}^y+\\Delta {\\sigma}_k^z{\\sigma}_{k+1}^z\\right) $$\\end{document}is well known for any fixed M, the boundary conditions vary according to whether M ∈ 4ℕ + r, where r = −1, 0, 1, 2, and also according to the parity of the number of overturned spins in the state, In string theory all these cases must be allowed because interactions involve a string with M spins breaking into strings with M1< M and M − M1 spins (or vice versa). We organize the energy spectrum and degeneracies of H in the case ∆ = 0 where the system is equivalent to a system of free fermions. In spite of the multiplicity of special cases, in the limit M → ∞ the spectrum is that of a free compactified worldsheet field. Such a field can be interpreted as a compact transverse string coordinate x(σ) ≡ x(σ) + R0. We construct the bosonization formulas explicitly in all separate cases, and for each sector give the Virasoro conformal generators in both fermionic and bosonic formulations. Furthermore from calculations in the literature for selected classes of excited states, there is strong evidence that the only change for ∆ ≠ 0 is a change in the compactification radius R0→ R∆. As ∆ → −1 this radius goes to infinity, giving a concrete example of noncompact space emerging from a discrete dynamical system. Finally we apply our work to construct the three string vertex implied by a string whose bosonic coordinates emerge from this mechanism.

Particle–hole symmetries in condensed matter

The term “particle–hole symmetry” is beset with conflicting meanings in contemporary physics. Conceived and written from a condensed-matter standpoint, the present paper aims to clarify and sharpen the terminology. In that vein, we propose to define the operation of “particle–hole conjugation” as the tautological algebra automorphism that simply swaps single-fermion creation and annihilation operators, and we construct its invariant lift to the Fock space. Particle–hole symmetries then arise for gapful or gapless free-fermion systems at half filling, as the concatenation of particle–hole conjugation with one or another involution that reverses the sign of the first-quantized Hamiltonian. We illustrate that construction principle with a series of examples including the Su–Schrieffer–Heeger model and the Kitaev–Majorana chain. For an enhanced perspective, we contrast particle–hole symmetries with the charge-conjugation symmetry of relativistic Dirac fermions. We go on to present two major applications in the realm of interacting electrons. For one, we offer a heuristic argument that the celebrated Haldane phase of antiferromagnetic quantum spin chains is adiabatically connected to a free-fermion topological phase protected by a particle–hole symmetry. For another, we review the recent proposal by Son [Phys. Rev. X 5, 031027 (2015)] for a particle–hole conjugation symmetric effective field theory of the half-filled lowest Landau level, and we comment on the emerging microscopic picture of the composite fermion.

Correlated fragile topology: A parton approach

A fragile topological insulator (FTI) can be viewed as an almost-atomic insulator, with emergent negative charges localized at certain real-space points, even though the underlying lattice Hilbert space contains only positively charged states. Fragile topology in free-fermion systems has been fruitfully studied using modern topological band theory. However, the concept is well defined even for strongly correlated systems, and fragile states that cannot be realized within free-fermion band theory exist abundantly. In this work we propose a rather general parton construction for such correlation-enabled FTIs. In our parton construction the associated gauge symmetries are completely Higgsed, resulting in only short-range entangled states. The effective negative charges in the FTIs emerge naturally as the remnants of negatively charged partons. For spinful electrons with $SU(2)$ spin-rotation symmetry, the fragile phases can be viewed as FTIs of charge-2, spin singlet bosonic Cooper pairs. We discuss a few examples of correlated FTIs for both spinless and spinful fermions, including some ``featureless Mott insulators'' on the honeycomb lattice previously discussed in the literature.

How Dynamical Quantum Memories Forget

Motivated by recent work showing that a quantum error correcting code can be generated by hybrid dynamics of unitaries and measurements, we study the long time behavior of such systems. We demonstrate that even in the ``mixed'' phase, a maximally mixed initial density matrix is purified on a time scale equal to the Hilbert space dimension (i.e., exponential in system size), albeit with noisy dynamics at intermediate times which we connect to Dyson Brownian motion. In contrast, we show that free fermion systems—i.e., ones where the unitaries are generated by quadratic Hamiltonians and the measurements are of fermion bilinears—purify in a time quadratic in the system size. In particular, a volume law phase for the entanglement entropy cannot be sustained in a free fermion system.

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.

Work relation in non-equilibrium steady states of one-dimensional quantum lattice systems

We consider the non-equilibrium steady state induced by two infinitely extended quantum thermal reservoirs at different inverse temperatures β + Δβ, β − Δβ and derive a work relation. We consider global cyclic operations and derive an upper bound of the work density in one-dimensional quantum lattice systems. This relation reproduces the second law of thermodynamics in the equilibrium limit Δβ → 0. A free fermion system is discussed as an example, and the physical interpretation is given to the upper bound.

Bosons vs. Fermions – A computational complexity perspective

Recent years have seen a flurry of activity in the fields of quantum computing and quantum complexity theory, which aim to understand the computational capabilities of quantum systems by applying the toolbox of computational complexity theory. This paper explores the conceptually rich and technologically useful connection between the dynamics of free quantum particles and complexity theory. I review results on the computational power of two simple quantum systems, built out of noninteracting bosons (linear optics) or noninteracting fermions. These rudimentary quantum computers display radically different capabilities—while free fermions are easy to simulate on a classical computer, and therefore devoid of nontrivial computational power, a free-boson computer can perform tasks expected to be classically intractable. To build the argument for these results, I introduce concepts from computational complexity theory. I describe some complexity classes, starting with P and NP and building up to the less common #P and polynomial hierarchy, and the relations between them. I identify how probabilities in free-bosonic and free-fermionic systems fit within this classification, which then underpins their difference in computational power. This paper is aimed at graduate or advanced undergraduate students with a Physics background, hopefully serving as a soft introduction to this exciting and highly evolving field.

Lie-algebraic approach to one-dimensional translationally invariant free-fermionic dissipative systems

We study dissipative translationally invariant free-fermionic theories with quadratic Liouvillians. Using a Lie-algebraic approach, we solve the Lindblad equation and find the density matrix at all times for arbitrary time dependence of the Liouvillian. We then investigate the Liouvillian spectral properties and derive a generic criterion for the closure of the dissipative gap, which is believed to be linked with nonequilibrium dissipative phase transitions. We illustrate our findings with a few exotic examples. Particularly, we show the presence of gapless modes with a linear spectrum for fermions with long-range hopping, which might be related to nonunitary conformal field theories. The predicted effects can be probed in experiments with ultracold atomic and quantum-optical systems using currently available experimental facilities.

Inhomogeneous XX spin chains and quasi-exactly solvable models

We establish a direct connection between inhomogeneous XX spin chains (or free fermion systems with nearest-neighbors hopping) and certain QES models on the line giving rise to a family of weakly orthogonal polynomials. We classify all such models and their associated XX chains, which include two families related to the Lamé (finite gap) quantum potential on the line. For one of these chains, we numerically compute the Rényi bipartite entanglement entropy at half filling and derive an asymptotic approximation thereof by studying the model’s continuum limit, which turns out to describe a massless Dirac fermion on a suitably curved background. We show that the leading behavior of the entropy is that of a c = 1 critical system, although there is a subleading log(log N) correction (where N is the number of sites) unusual in this type of models.

Symmetry resolved entanglement in two-dimensional systems via dimensional reduction

We report on the calculation of the symmetry resolved entanglement entropies in two-dimensional many-body systems of free bosons and fermions by dimensional reduction. When the subsystem is translational invariant in a transverse direction, this strategy allows us to reduce the initial two-dimensional problem into decoupled one-dimensional ones in a mixed space-momentum representation. While the idea straightforwardly applies to any dimension d, here we focus on the case d = 2 and derive explicit expressions for two lattice models possessing a U(1) symmetry, i.e., free non-relativistic massless fermions and free complex (massive and massless) bosons. Although our focus is on symmetry resolved entropies, some results for the total entanglement are also new. Our derivation gives a transparent understanding of the well known different behaviours between massless bosons and fermions in d ⩾ 2: massless fermions presents logarithmic violation of the area which instead strictly hold for bosons, even massless. This is true both for the total and the symmetry resolved entropies. Interestingly, we find that the equipartition of entanglement into different symmetry sectors holds also in two dimensions at leading order in subsystem size; we identify for both systems the first term breaking it. All our findings are quantitatively tested against exact numerical calculations in lattice models for both bosons and fermions.

Correlation functions of charged free boson and fermion systems

Using the idea of the quantum inverse scattering method, we introduce the operators B(x), C(x) and corresponding to the off-diagonal entries of the monodromy matrix T for the phase model and i-boson model in terms of bc fermions and neutral fermions respectively, thus giving alternative treatment of the KP and BKP hierarchies. We also introduce analogous operators B*(x) and C*(x) for the charged free boson system and show that they are in complete analogy to those of bc fermionic fields. It is proved that the correlation function ⟨0|C(xN)⋯C(x1)B(y1)⋯B(yN)|0⟩ in the bc fermionic fields is the inverse of the correlation function ⟨0|C*(xN)⋯C*(x1)B*(y1)⋯B*(yN)|0⟩ in the charged free bosons.

Higher-dimensional generalizations of Berry curvature

A family of finite-dimensional quantum systems with a non-degenerate ground state gives rise to a closed 2-form on the parameter space: the curvature of the Berry connection. Its cohomology class is a topological invariant of the family. We seek generalizations of the Berry curvature to families of gapped many-body systems in D spatial dimensions. Field theory predicts that in spatial dimension D the analog of the Berry curvature is a closed (D+2)-form on the parameter space (the Wess-Zumino-Witten form). We construct such closed forms for arbitrary families of interacting lattice systems in all dimensions. In the special case of systems of free fermions in one dimension, we show that these forms can be expressed in terms of the Bloch-Berry connection on the product of the Brillouin zone and the parameter space. In the case of families of Short-Range Entangled systems, we argue that integrals of our forms over spherical cycles are quantized.

Bounds on the entanglement entropy by the number entropy in non-interacting fermionic systems

Entanglement in a pure state of a many-body system can be characterized by the Rényi entropies S^{(\alpha)}=\ln\textrm{tr}(\rho^\alpha)/(1-\alpha)S(α)=lntr(ρα)/(1−α) of the reduced density matrix \rhoρ of a subsystem. These entropies are, however, difficult to access experimentally and can typically be determined for small systems only. Here we show that for free fermionic systems in a Gaussian state and with particle number conservation, S^{(2)}S(2) can be tightly bound—from above and below—by the much easier accessible Rényi number entropy S^{(2)}_N=-\ln \sum_n p^2(n)SN(2)=−ln∑np2(n) which is a function of the probability distribution p(n)p(n) of the total particle number in the considered subsystem only. A dynamical growth in entanglement, in particular, is therefore always accompanied by a growth—albeit logarithmically slower—of the number entropy. We illustrate this relation by presenting numerical results for quenches in non-interacting one-dimensional lattice models including disorder-free, Anderson-localized, and critical systems with off-diagonal (bond) disorder.

Quantum aspects of hydrodynamic transport from weak electron-impurity scattering

Recent experimental observations of apparently hydrodynamic electronic transport have generated much excitement. However, the understanding of the observed non-local transport (whirlpool) effects and parabolic (Poiseuille-like) current profiles has largely been motivated by a phenomenological analogy to classical fluids. This is due to difficulty in incorporating strong correlations in quantum mechanical calculation of transport, which has been the primary angle for interpreting the apparently hydrodynamic transport. Here we demonstrate that even free fermion systems, in the presence of (inevitable) disorder, exhibit non-local conductivity effects such as those observed in experiment because of the fermionic system's long-range entangled nature. On the basis of explicit calculations of the conductivity at finite wavevector, $\sigma({\bf q})$, for selected weakly disordered free fermion systems, we propose experimental strategies for demonstrating distinctive quantum effects in non-local transport at odds with the expectations of classical kinetic theory. Our results imply that the observation of whirlpools or other "hydrodynamic" effects does not guarantee the dominance of electron-electron scattering over electron-impurity scattering.