XXZ Chain Research Articles

Open XXZ chain and boundary modes at zero temperature

We study the open XXZ spin chain in the anti-ferromagnetic regime and for generic longitudinal magnetic fields at the two boundaries. We discuss the ground state via the Bethe ansatz and we show that, for a chain of even length L and in a regime where both boundary magnetic fields are equal and bounded by a critical field, the spectrum is gapped and the ground state is doubly degenerate up to exponentially small corrections in L. We connect this degeneracy to the presence of a boundary root, namely an excitation localized at one of the two boundaries. We compute the local magnetization at the left edge of the chain and we show that, due to the existence of a boundary root, this depends also on the value of the field at the opposite edge, even in the half-infinite chain limit. Moreover we give an exact expression for the large time limit of the spin autocorrelation at the boundary, which we explicitly compute in terms of the form factor between the two quasi-degenerate ground states. This, as we show, turns out to be equal to the contribution of the boundary root to the local magnetization. We finally discuss the case of chains of odd length.

The non-compact XXZ spin chain as stochastic particle process

In this note we relate the Hamiltonian of the integrable non-compact spin s XXZ chain to the Markov generator of a stochastic particle process. The hopping rates of the continuous-time process are identified with the ones of a q-Hahn asymmetric zero range model. The main difference with the asymmetric simple exclusion process, which can be mapped to the ordinary XXZ spin chain, is that multiple particles can occupy one and the same site. For the non-compact spin XXZ chain the associated stochastic process reduces to the multiparticle asymmetric diffusion model introduced by Sasamoto–Wadati.

Laws of large numbers in the raise and peel model

We establish the exact laws of large numbers for two time additive quantities in the raise and peel model, the number of tiles removed by avalanches and the number of global avalanches happened by given time. The validity of conjectures for the related stationary state correlation functions then follow. The proof is based on the technique of Baxter’s T-Q equation applied to the associated XXZ chain and on its solution at obtained by Fridkin, Stroganov and Zagier.

Dissipative quantum Ising chain as a non-Hermitian Ashkin-Teller model

We study a quantum Ising chain with tailored bulk dissipation, which can be mapped onto a non-Hermitian Ashkin-Teller model. By exploiting the Kohmoto-den Nijs-Kadanoff transformation, we further map it to a staggered XXZ spin chain with pure-imaginary anisotropy parameters. This allows us to study the eigenstates of the original Liouvillian in great detail. We show that the steady state in each parity sector is a completely mixed state. The uniqueness of each is proved rigorously. We then study the decay modes on the self-dual line corresponding to the uniform XXZ chain and obtain an exact formula for the Liouvillian gap $ g $, the inverse relaxation time, in the thermodynamic limit. The gap $ g $ as a function of dissipation strength $ \Delta $ has a cusp, implying a kind of phase transition for the first decay mode.

Decay rates and energies of free magnons and bound states in dissipative XXZ chains

Chains of coupled two-level atoms behave as one-dimensional quantum spin systems, exhibiting free magnons and magnon bound states. While these excitations are well studied for closed systems, little consideration has been given to how they are altered by the presence of an environment. This will be especially important in systems that exhibit nonlocal dissipation, e.g., systems in which the magnons decay due to optical emission. In this paper, we consider free magnon excitations and two-magnon bound states in an XXZ chain with nonlocal dissipation. We prove that while the energy of the bound state can lie outside the two-magnon continuum of energies, the decay rate of the bound state has to always lie within the two-magnon continuum of decay rates. We then derive analytically the bound-state solutions for a system where both the XY interaction and nonlocal dissipation are nearest neighbor or next-nearest neighbor, finding that the inclusion of nonlocal dissipation allows more freedom in engineering the energy and decay rate dispersions for the bound states. Finally, we numerically study a model of an experimental setup that should allow the realization of dissipative bound states by using Rydberg-dressed atoms coupled to a photonic crystal waveguide. We demonstrate that this model can exhibit many key features of our simpler models.

Typical growth behavior of the out-of-time-ordered commutator in many-body localized systems

We investigate the typicality of the growth behavior of the out-of-time-ordered commutator (OTOC) in the many-body localized (MBL) quantum spin chains across random disorder realizations. In the MBL phase of the Heisenberg XXZ chain, we find that the estimate of the OTOC fluctuates significantly with the disorder realizations at the intermediate times of the main growth. Despite the consequent failure of the disorder average in the MBL phase, we argue that the characteristic behavior of the OTOC growth can still be identified by going through individual disorder realizations. We find that a power-law-type growth behavior appears typically after a disorder-dependent relaxation period, which is very close to the $t^2$ form derived in the effective Hamiltonian of a fully MBL system. The characteristic growth behavior observed at an individual disorder realization is robust in our tests with various state preparations and also verified in another MBL system of the random-transverse-field quantum Ising chain in a uniform longitudinal field.

Quantum phase transitions beyond Landau-Ginzburg theory in one-dimensional space revisited

The phase diagram of the quantum spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic $J^{\,}_{1}$-$J^{\,}_{2}$ XXZ chain was obtained by Haldane using bosonization techniques. It supports three distinct phases for $0\leq J^{\,}_{2}/J^{\,}_{1}<1/2$, i.e., a gapless algebraic spin liquid phase, a gapped long-range ordered Neel phase, and a gapped long-range ordered dimer phase. Even though the Neel and dimer phases are not related hierarchically by a pattern of symmetry breaking, it was shown that they meet along a line of quantum critical points with a U(1) symmetry and central charge $c=1$. Here, we extend the analysis made by Haldane on the quantum spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic $J^{\,}_{1}$-$J^{\,}_{2}$ XYZ chain using both bosonization and numerical techniques. We show that there are three Neel phases and the dimer phase that are separated from each other by six planes of phase boundaries realizing U(1) criticality when $0\leq J^{\,}_{2}/J^{\,}_{1}<1/2$. We also show that each long-range ordered phase harbors topological point defects (domain walls) that are dual to those across the phase boundary in that a defect in one ordered phase locally binds the other type of order around its core. By using the bosonization approach, we identify the critical theory that describes simultaneous proliferation of these dual point defects, and show that it supports an emergent U(1) symmetry that originates from the discrete symmetries of the XYZ model. To confirm this numerically, we perform DMRG calculation and show that the critical theory is characterized by the central charge $c=1$ with critical exponents that are consistent with those obtained from the bosonization approach. Furthermore, we generalize the field theoretic description of direct continuous phase transition to higher dimensions, especially in $d=3$, by using a non-linear sigma model (NLSM) with a topological term.

The propagator of the finite XXZ spin-$\tfrac{1}{2}$ chain

We derive contour integral formulas for the real space propagator of the spin-\tfrac1212 XXZ chain. The exact results are valid in any finite volume with periodic boundary conditions, and for any value of the anisotropy parameter. The integrals are on fixed contours, that are independent of the Bethe Ansatz solution of the model and the string hypothesis. The propagator is obtained by two different methods. First we compute it through the spectral sum of a deformed model, and as a by-product we also compute the propagator of the XXZ chain perturbed by a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction term. As a second way we also compute the propagator through a lattice path integral, which is evaluated exactly utilizing the so-called FF-basis in the mirror (or quantum) channel. The final expressions are similar to the Yudson representation of the infinite volume propagator, with the volume entering as a parameter. As an application of the propagator we compute the Loschmidt amplitude for the quantum quench from a domain wall state.

Magnetization and entanglement after a geometric quench in the XXZ chain

We investigate the dynamics of the XXZ spin chain after a geometric quench, which is realized by connecting two half-chains prepared in their ground states with zero and maximum magnetizations, respectively. The profiles of magnetization after the subsequent time evolution are studied numerically by density-matrix renormalization group methods, and a comparison to the predictions of generalized hydrodynamics yields a very good agreement. We also calculate the profiles of entanglement entropy and propose an ansatz for the noninteracting XX case, based on arguments from conformal field theory. In the general interacting case, the propagation of the entropy front is studied numerically both before and after the reflection from the chain boundaries. Finally, our results for the magnetization fluctuations indicate a leading order proportionality relation to the entanglement entropy.

Global quantum discord and thermal tensor network in XXZ chains at finite temperatures

We characterize multi-site quantum correlations in 1D finite-size XXZ chains at finite temperatures with global quantum discord. With the help of an exact diagonalization method and a thermal-tensor-network algorithm, the thermal-state discord G(ρˆT) is evaluated efficiently by well-developed optimization algorithms. Firstly, we find that in a finite temperature region, G(ρˆT) shows some footprint of the quantum phase transition of the model. The underlying mechanism is that ρˆT captures the level crossing in the low-lying excited states. Secondly, we study the temperature dependence of G(ρˆT). When the anisotropy is strong, G(ρˆT) will show a broad thermal plateau. We offer a quantitative explanation of the plateau by truncating the thermal-state operator ρˆT with respect to several low-lying states. Thirdly, we investigate the scaling behavior of G(ρˆT). We find that when N is large enough, G(ρˆT) would show a linear scaling. Finally, combined with the thermal tensor networks and the linear scaling behavior, we successfully figure out reliable results for G(ρˆT) in the full-temperature regions with N up to 16. We believe that the thermal tensor networks will play a role in studying general multi-site quantum correlations in 1D chains at finite temperatures.

Specific heat and thermal entanglement in an open quantum system

In this paper, the density matrix is obtained using the non-Markovian master equation method for a system consisting of two-qubit modeling with the Heisenberg XXZ chain, which involves the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction and is exposed to the bosonic baths. Also, using the proposed formula for calculating the specific heat through the density matrix of the open quantum system, the specific heat is calculated. The quantum entanglement behavior with time and coupling constant is investigated. It is observed that the specific heat at low temperatures becomes negative when the system is exposed to the environment. The time behavior of quantum entanglement for this model showed that the entanglement decreases to zero with increasing time.

Subdiffusive front scaling in interacting integrable models

We show that any interacting integrable model possesses a class of initial states for which the leading corrections to ballistic transport are subdiffusive rather than diffusive. These initial states are natural to realize experimentally and include the domain wall initial condition that has been the object of much recent scrutiny. Upon performing numerical matrix product state simulations in the spin-$1/2$ XXZ chain, we find that such states can exhibit subdiffusive $t^{1/3}$ scaling of fronts of spin, energy and entanglement entropy across the entire range of anisotropies. This demonstrates that Tracy-Widom scaling is not incompatible with model interactions, as was previously believed.

Combining dynamical quantum typicality and numerical linked cluster expansions

We demonstrate that numerical linked cluster expansions (NLCE) yield a powerful approach to calculate time-dependent correlation functions for quantum many-body systems in one dimension. As a paradigmatic example, we study the dynamics of the spin current in the spin-1/2 XXZ chain for different values of anisotropy, as well as in the presence of an integrability-breaking next-nearest neighbor interaction. For short to intermediate time scales, we unveil that NLCE yields a convergence towards the thermodynamic limit already for small cluster sizes, which is much faster than in direct calculations of the autocorrelation function for systems with open or periodic boundary conditions. Most importantly, we show that the range of accessible cluster sizes in NLCE can be extended by evaluating the contributions of larger clusters by means of a pure-state approach based on the concept of dynamical quantum typicality (DQT). Even for moderate computational effort, this combination of DQT and NLCE provides a competitive alternative to existing state-of-the-art techniques, which may be applied in higher dimensions as well.

The Loschmidt-echo dynamics in a quantum chaos model

We have considered the spin-1/2 XXZ chain model which is exactly solvable with the Bethe anzats method. It is shown adding a single defect away from edges is sufficient to see a chaos signature in the model. In this work, we have studied the time behavior of the Loschmidt-echo (LE) by considering domain-wall and Neel states as two product initial states and also a Bell state as an entangled initial state. We have used the numerical full diagonalization method to have full spectrum of the model. It is shown that very short times behavior of the LE is independent from defect and initial state, and the decay is quadratic. Moreover, results show that in the chaotic regime and for intermediate times, the exponential decay behavior of the LE shows some changes by removing defect from the chain in the domain-wall and Bell states, while no changes is seen in the Neel state. To get some intuition of these changes, we have addressed the relation between the dynamics of the LE and the local density of states features.

Klein bottle entropy of compactified boson conformal field theory

We extend the scope of the Klein bottle entropy, originally introduced by [Tu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 261603 (2017)] in the rational conformal field theory (CFT), to the compactified boson CFT, which are relevant to the studies of Luttinger liquids. We first review the Klein bottle entropy in rational CFT and discuss details of how to extract the Klein bottle entropy from lattice models using the example of the transverse field Ising model. We then go beyond the scope of rational CFT and study the Klein bottle entropy $\ln g$ in the compactified boson CFT, which turns out to have a straightforward relation to the compactification radius $R$, $\ln g = \ln R$. This relation indicates a convenient and efficient method to extract the Luttinger parameter from lattice model calculations. Our numerical results on the Klein bottle entropy in the spin-$1/2$ XXZ chain show excellent agreement with the CFT predictions, up to some small deviations near the isotropic point, which we attribute to the marginally irrelevant terms. For the $S = 1$ XXZ chain that cannot be exactly solved, our numerical results provide an accurate numerical determination of the Luttinger parameter in this model.

Snapshot Spectra in the World-Line Quantum Monte Carlo for One-Dimensional Quantum Spin Systems

We introduce a snapshot density matrix and snapshot spectrum for world-line (WL) quantum Monte Carlo simulations, by integrating out the continuous-imaginary-time index of WL snapshots. For the transverse-field Ising chain, we reveal fundamental properties of the snapshot spectrum as follows. (i) In the ordered phase, the isolated peak corresponding to the maximum eigenvalue appears, indicating the classical nature of WL configurations. (ii) In the disordered phase, the spectrum converges to the dome-like distribution characterized by an effective aspect ratio of the snapshots. (iii) At the critical point, the power-law distribution is observed with an appropriate scaling analysis of the fixed aspect ratio. For the XXZ chain, we also obtain numerical results consistent with the above properties. In addition, the representation-basis dependence of the snapshot spectrum is also discussed.

Spin liquids from Majorana zero modes in a Cooper-pair box

We propose a path for constructing diverse interacting spin systems from topological nanowires in Cooper Boxes. The wires are grouped into a three-wire building block called an 'hexon', consisting of six Majorana zero modes. In the presence of a strong charging energy, the hexon becomes a Cooper box equivalent to two spin-$1/2$ degrees of freedom. By considering arrays of hexons and controlling the distances between the various wires, one can tune the Hamiltonian governing the low-energy spins, thus providing a route for controllably constructing interacting spin systems in one- and two-dimensions. We explicitly present realizations of the one-dimensional spin-$1/2$ XXZ chain, as well as the transverse field Ising model. We propose an experiment capable of revealing the nature of critical points in such effective spin systems by applying a local gate voltage and measuring the induced charge at a distance. To demonstrate the applicability of this approach to two-dimensions, we provide a scheme for realizing the topologically ordered Yao-Kivelson spin-liquid model, which has a collective Majorana edge mode, similar to the B-phase of Kitaev's honeycomb model.

Towards a generalized hydrodynamics description of Rényi entropies in integrable systems

We investigate the steady-state R\'enyi entanglement entropies after a quench from a piecewise homogeneous initial state in integrable models. In the quench protocol two macroscopically different chains (leads) are joined together at the initial time, and the subsequent dynamics is studied. We study the entropies of a finite subsystem at the interface between the two leads. The density of R\'enyi entropies coincides with that of the entropies of the Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE) that describes the interface between the chains. By combining the Generalized Hydrodynamics (GHD) treatment of the quench with the Bethe ansatz approach for the R\'enyi entropies, we provide exact results for quenches from several initial states in the anisotropic Heisenberg chain (XXZ chain), although the approach is applicable, in principle, to any low-entangled initial state and any integrable model. An interesting protocol that we consider is the expansion quench, in which one of the two leads is prepared in the vacuum of the model excitations. An intriguing feature is that for moderately large anisotropy the transport of bound-state is not allowed. Moreover, we show that there is a `critical' anisotropy, above which bound-state transport is permitted. This is reflected in the steady-state entropies, which for large enough anisotropy do not contain information about the bound states. Finally, we benchmark our results against time-dependent Density Matrix Renormalization Group (tDMRG) simulations.

The spin Drude weight of the XXZ chain and generalized hydrodynamics

Based on a generalized free energy we derive exact thermodynamic Bethe ansatz formulas for the expectation value of the spin current, the spin current-charge, charge-charge correlators, and consequently the Drude weight. These formulas agree with recent conjectures within the generalized hydrodynamics formalism. They follow, however, directly from a proper treatment of the operator expression of the spin current. The result for the Drude weight is identical to the one obtained 20 years ago based on the Kohn formula and TBA. We numerically evaluate the Drude weight for anisotropies \Delta=\cos(\gamma)Δ=cos(γ) with \gamma = \pi n/mγ=πn/m, n\leq mn≤m integer and coprime. We prove, furthermore, that the high-temperature asymptotics for general \gamma=\pi n/mγ=πn/m—obtained by analysis of the quantum transfer matrix eigenvalues—agrees with the bound which has been obtained by the construction of quasi-local charges.

Non-integrable fermionic chains near criticality

We compute the Drude weight and the critical exponents as functions of the density in non-integrable generalizations of XXZ or Hubbard chains, in the critical high- or low-density regime where the dispersion becomes almost quadratic, the Luttinger liquid description breaks down and the Bethe ansatz cannot be used. Even in the regions where irrelevant terms dominate, no difference between integrable and non-integrable models appears in exponents and conductivity at zero temperature. Our results are based on a fully rigorous two-regime multiscale analysis and a recently introduced partially solvable model.