International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
In this paper, we use the charged-current Higgs boson production process at future electron-proton colliders, epHjνee^-p \to H j \nu_e, with the subsequent decay of the Higgs boson into a bbˉb\bar{b} pair, to probe the Standard Model effective field theory with dimension-six operators involving the Higgs boson and the bottom quark. The study is performed for two proposed future high-energy electron-proton colliders, the Large Hadron Electron Collider (LHeC) and the Future Circular Collider (FCC-he) at the center-of-mass energies of 1.3 TeV and 3.46 TeV, respectively. Constraints on the CP-even and CP-odd HbbˉHb\bar{b} couplings are derived by analyzing the simulated signal and background samples. A realistic detector simulation is performed and a multivariate technique using the gradient Boosted Decision Trees algorithm is employed to discriminate the signal from background. Expected limits are obtained at 95%95\% Confidence Level for the LHeC and FCC-he assuming the integrated luminosities of 1, 2 and 10 ab1^{-1}. We find that using 1 ab1^{-1} of data, the CP-even and CP-odd HbbˉHb\bar{b} couplings can be constrained with accuracies of the order of 10310^{-3} and 10210^{-2}, respectively, and a significant region of the unprobed parameter space becomes accessible.
The Mpemba effect, where a hotter system can equilibrate faster than a cooler one, has long been a subject of fascination in classical physics. In the past few years, significant theoretical and experimental progress has been made in understanding its occurrence in both classical and quantum systems. In this review, we provide a concise overview of the Mpemba effect in quantum systems, with a focus on both open and isolated dynamics which give rise to distinct manifestations of this anomalous non-equilibrium phenomenon. We discuss key theoretical frameworks, highlight experimental observations, and explore the fundamental mechanisms that give rise to anomalous relaxation behaviors. Particular attention is given to the role of quantum fluctuations, integrability, and symmetry in shaping equilibration pathways. Finally, we outline open questions and future directions.
Researchers from SISSA and ICTP quantitatively demonstrate how label noise impacts the information content of neural network representations, showing that while overparameterized hidden layers remain largely robust, the final classification layer loses significant information, a phenomenon measurable by the Information Imbalance metric which also reveals a double descent in representation quality.
We develop a systematic approach to compute the subsystem trace distances and relative entropies for subsystem reduced density matrices associated to excited states in different symmetry sectors of a 1+1 dimensional conformal field theory having an internal U(1) symmetry. We provide analytic expressions for the charged moments corresponding to the resolution of both relative entropies and distances for general integer nn. For the relative entropies, these formulas are manageable and the analytic continuation to n=1n=1 can be worked out in most of the cases. Conversely, for the distances the corresponding charged moments become soon untreatable as nn increases. A remarkable result is that relative entropies and distances are the same for all symmetry sectors, i.e. they satisfy entanglement equipartition, like the entropies. Moreover, we exploit the OPE expansion of composite twist fields, to provide very general results when the subsystem is much smaller than the total system. We focus on the massless compact boson and our results are tested against exact numerical calculations in the XX spin chain.
The quantum Mpemba effect is the counter-intuitive non-equilibrium phenomenon wherein the dynamic restoration of a broken symmetry occurs more rapidly when the initial state exhibits a higher degree of symmetry breaking. The effect has been recently discovered theoretically and observed experimentally in the framework of global quantum quenches, but so far it has only been investigated in one-dimensional systems. Here we focus on a two-dimensional free-fermion lattice employing the entanglement asymmetry as a measure of symmetry breaking. Our investigation begins with the ground state analysis of a system featuring nearest-neighbor hoppings and superconducting pairings, the latter breaking explicitly the U(1)U(1) particle number symmetry. We compute analytically the entanglement asymmetry of a periodic strip using dimensional reduction, an approach that allows us to adjust the extent of the transverse size, achieving a smooth crossover between one and two dimensions. Further applying the same method, we study the time evolution of the entanglement asymmetry after a quench to a Hamiltonian with only nearest-neighbor hoppings, preserving the particle number symmetry which is restored in the stationary state. We find that the quantum Mpemba effect is strongly affected by the size of the system in the transverse dimension, with the potential to either enhance or spoil the phenomenon depending on the initial states. We establish the conditions for its occurrence based on the properties of the initial configurations, extending the criteria found in the one-dimensional case.
We present here various techniques to work with clean and disordered quantum Ising chains, for the benefit of students and non-experts. Starting from the Jordan-Wigner transformation, which maps spin-1/2 systems into fermionic ones, we review some of the basic approaches to deal with the superconducting correlations that naturally emerge in this context. In particular, we analyse the form of the ground state and excitations of the model, relating them to the symmetry-breaking physics, and illustrate aspects connected to calculating dynamical quantities, thermal averages, correlation functions and entanglement entropy. A few problems provide simple applications of the techniques.
Properties of twist grain boundaries (TGB), long known structurally but not tribologically, are simulated under sliding and load, with Au(111) our test case. The load-free TGB moiré is smooth and superlubric at incommensurate twists. Strikingly, load provokes a first-order structural transformation, where the highest energy moiré nodes are removed -- an Aubry-type transition for which we provide a Landau theory and a twist-load phase diagram. Upon frictional sliding, the transformation causes a superlubric-locked transition, with a huge friction jump, and irreversible plastic flow. The predicted phenomena are robust, also recovered in a Lennard-Jones lattice TGB, and not exclusive to gold or to metals.
The entanglement Hamiltonian (EH) provides the most comprehensive characterization of bipartite entanglement in many-body quantum systems. Ground states of local Hamiltonians inherit this locality, resulting in EHs that are dominated by local, few-body terms. Unfortunately, in non-equilibrium situations, analytic results are rare and largely confined to continuous field theories, which fail to accurately describe microscopic models. To address this gap, we present an analytic result for the EH following a quantum quench in non-interacting fermionic models, valid in the ballistic scaling regime. The derivation adapts the celebrated quasiparticle picture to operators, providing detailed insights into its physical properties. The resulting analytic formula serves as a foundation for engineering EHs in quantum optics experiments.
Entanglement asymmetry is a quantity recently introduced to measure how much a symmetry is broken in a part of an extended quantum system. It has been employed to analyze the non-equilibrium dynamics of a broken symmetry after a global quantum quench with a Hamiltonian that preserves it. In this work, we carry out a comprehensive analysis of the entanglement asymmetry at equilibrium taking the ground state of the XY spin chain, which breaks the U(1)U(1) particle number symmetry, and provide a physical interpretation of it in terms of superconducting Cooper pairs. We also consider quenches from this ground state to the XX spin chain, which preserves the broken U(1)U(1) symmetry. In this case, the entanglement asymmetry reveals that the more the symmetry is initially broken, the faster it may be restored in a subsystem, a surprising and counter-intuitive phenomenon that is a type of a quantum Mpemba effect. We obtain a quasi-particle picture for the entanglement asymmetry in terms of Cooper pairs, from which we derive the microscopic conditions to observe the quantum Mpemba effect in this system, giving further support to the criteria recently proposed for arbitrary integrable quantum systems. In addition, we find that the power law governing symmetry restoration depends discontinuously on whether the initial state is critical or not, leading to new forms of strong and weak Mpemba effects.
We propose the Symmetry TFT for theories with a U(1)U(1) symmetry in arbitrary dimension. The Symmetry TFT describes the structure of the symmetry, its anomalies, and the possible topological manipulations. It is constructed as a BF theory of gauge fields for groups U(1)U(1) and R\mathbb{R}, and contains a continuum of topological operators. We also propose an operation that produces the Symmetry TFT for the theory obtained by dynamically gauging the U(1)U(1) symmetry. We discuss many examples. As an interesting outcome, we obtain the Symmetry TFT for the non-invertible Q/Z\mathbb{Q}/\mathbb{Z} chiral symmetry in four dimensions.
We generalise the form factor bootstrap approach to integrable field theories with U(1) symmetry to derive matrix elements of composite branch-point twist fields associated with symmetry resolved entanglement entropies. The bootstrap equations are solved for the free massive Dirac and complex boson theories, which are the simplest theories with U(1) symmetry. We present the exact and complete solution for the bootstrap, including vacuum expectation values and form factors involving any type and arbitrarily number of particles. The non-trivial solutions are carefully cross-checked by performing various limits and by the application of the Delta-theorem. An alternative and compact determination of the novel form factors is also presented. Based on the form factors of the U(1) composite branch-point twist fields, we re-derive earlier results showing entanglement equipartition for an interval in the ground state of the two models.
We present experimentally and numerically accessible quantities that can be used to differentiate among various families of random entangled states. To this end, we analyze the entanglement properties of bipartite reduced states of a tripartite pure state. We introduce a ratio of simple polynomials of low-order moments of the partially transposed reduced density matrix and show that this ratio takes well-defined values in the thermodynamic limit for various families of entangled states. This allows to sharply distinguish entanglement phases, in a way that can be understood from a quantum information perspective based on the spectrum of the partially transposed density matrix. We analyze in particular the entanglement phase diagram of Haar random states, states resulting form the evolution of chaotic Hamiltonians, stabilizer states, which are outputs of Clifford circuits, Matrix Product States, and fermionic Gaussian states. We show that for Haar random states the resulting phase diagram resembles the one obtained via the negativity and that for all the cases mentioned above a very distinctive behaviour is observed. Our results can be used to experimentally test necessary conditions for different types of mixed-state randomness, in quantum states formed in quantum computers and programmable quantum simulators.
We propose an efficient algorithm to numerically solve Anderson impurity problems using matrix product states. By introducing a modified chain mapping we obtain significantly lower entanglement, as compared to all previous attempts, while keeping the short-range nature of the couplings. Our approach naturally extends to finite temperatures, with applications to dynamical mean field theory, non-equilibrium dynamics and quantum transport.
We carry out a comprehensive comparison between the exact modular Hamiltonian and the lattice version of the Bisognano-Wichmann (BW) one in one-dimensional critical quantum spin chains. As a warm-up, we first illustrate how the trace distance provides a more informative mean of comparison between reduced density matrices when compared to any other Schatten nn-distance, normalized or not. In particular, as noticed in earlier works, it provides a way to bound other correlation functions in a precise manner, i.e., providing both lower and upper bounds. Additionally, we show that two close reduced density matrices, i.e. with zero trace distance for large sizes, can have very different modular Hamiltonians. This means that, in terms of describing how two states are close to each other, it is more informative to compare their reduced density matrices rather than the corresponding modular Hamiltonians. After setting this framework, we consider the ground states for infinite and periodic XX spin chain and critical Ising chain. We provide robust numerical evidence that the trace distance between the lattice BW reduced density matrix and the exact one goes to zero as 2\ell^{-2} for large length of the interval \ell. This provides strong constraints on the difference between the corresponding entanglement entropies and correlation functions. Our results indicate that discretized BW reduced density matrices reproduce exact entanglement entropies and correlation functions of local operators in the limit of large subsystem sizes. Finally, we show that the BW reduced density matrices fall short of reproducing the exact behavior of the logarithmic emptiness formation probability in the ground state of the XX spin chain.
We study the time evolution of the R\'enyi entanglement entropies following a quantum quench in a two-dimensional (2D) free-fermion system. By employing dimensional reduction, we effectively transform the 2D problem into decoupled chains, a technique applicable when the system exhibits translational invariance in one direction. Various initial configurations are examined, revealing that the behavior of entanglement entropies can often be explained by adapting the one-dimensional quasiparticle picture. However, intriguingly, for specific initial states the entanglement entropy saturates to a finite value without the reduced density matrix converging to a stationary state. We discuss the conditions necessary for a stationary state to exist and delve into the necessary modifications to the quasiparticle picture when such a state is absent.
We consider the problem of the decomposition of the Rényi entanglement entropies in theories with a non-abelian symmetry by doing a thorough analysis of Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) models. We first consider SU(2)kSU(2)_k as a case study and then generalise to an arbitrary non-abelian Lie group. We find that at leading order in the subsystem size LL the entanglement is equally distributed among the different sectors labelled by the irreducible representation of the associated algebra. We also identify the leading term that breaks this equipartition: it does not depend on LL but only on the dimension of the representation. Moreover, a loglogL\log\log L contribution to the Rényi entropies exhibits a universal form related to the underlying symmetry group of the model, i.e. the dimension of the Lie group.
The presence of a global internal symmetry in a quantum many-body system is reflected in the fact that the entanglement between its subparts is endowed with an internal structure, namely it can be decomposed as sum of contributions associated to each symmetry sector. The symmetry resolution of entanglement measures provides a formidable tool to probe the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of quantum systems. Here, we study the time evolution of charge-imbalance-resolved negativity after a global quench in the context of free-fermion systems, complementing former works for the symmetry-resolved entanglement entropy. We find that the charge-imbalance-resolved logarithmic negativity shows an effective equipartition in the scaling limit of large times and system size, with a perfect equipartition for early and infinite times. We also derive and conjecture a formula for the dynamics of the charged R\'enyi logarithmic negativities. We argue that our results can be understood in the framework of the quasiparticle picture for the entanglement dynamics, and provide a conjecture that we expect to be valid for generic integrable models.
We introduce and realize demons that follow a customary gambling strategy to stop a nonequilibrium process at stochastic times. We derive second-law-like inequalities for the average work done in the presence of gambling, and universal stopping-time fluctuation relations for classical and quantum non-stationary stochastic processes. We test experimentally our results in a single-electron box, where an electrostatic potential drives the dynamics of individual electrons tunneling into a metallic island. We also discuss the role of coherence in gambling demons measuring quantum jump trajectories.
A large ongoing research effort focuses on Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs), representing leading candidates to achieve computational speed-ups on current quantum devices. The scalability of VQAs to a large number of qubits, beyond the simulation capabilities of classical computers, is still debated. Two major hurdles are the proliferation of low-quality variational local minima, and the exponential vanishing of gradients in the cost function landscape, a phenomenon referred to as barren plateaus. Here we show that by employing iterative search schemes one can effectively prepare the ground state of paradigmatic quantum many-body models, circumventing also the barren plateau phenomenon. This is accomplished by leveraging the transferability to larger system sizes of iterative solutions, displaying an intrinsic smoothness of the variational parameters, a result that does not extend to other solutions found via random-start local optimization. Our scheme could be directly tested on near-term quantum devices, running a refinement optimization in a favorable local landscape with non-vanishing gradients.
In quantum mechanics, the probability distribution function (PDF) and full counting statistics (FCS) play a fundamental role in characterizing the fluctuations of quantum observables, as they encode the complete information about these fluctuations. In this letter, we measure these two quantities in a trapped-ion quantum simulator for the transverse and longitudinal magnetization within a subsystem. We utilize the toolbox of classical shadows to postprocess the measurements performed in random bases. The measurement scheme efficiently allows access to the FCS and PDF of all possible operators on desired choices of subsystems of an extended quantum system.
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