Bosonic spinons in anisotropic triangular antiferromagnets

Anisotropic triangular antiferromagnets can host two primary spin excitations, namely, spinons and triplons. Here, we utilize polarization-resolved Raman spectroscopy to assess the statistics and dynamics of spinons in Ca3ReO5Cl2. We observe a magnetic Raman continuum consisting of one- and two-pair spinon-antispinon excitations as well as triplon excitations. The twofold rotational symmetry of the spinon and triplon excitations are distinct from magnons. The strong thermal evolution of spinon scattering is compatible with the bosonic spinon scenario. The quasilinear spinon hardening with decreasing temperature is envisaged as the ordering of one-dimensional topological defects. This discovery will enable a fundamental understanding of novel phenomena induced by lowering spatial dimensionality in quantum spin systems.

Dynamical Analysis of Quantum Annealing

Quantum annealing aims to provide a faster method than classical computing for finding the minima of complicated functions, and it has created increasing interest in the relaxation dynamics of quantum spin systems. Moreover, problems in quantum annealing caused by first-order phase transitions can be reduced via appropriate temporal adjustment of control parameters, and in order to do this optimally, it is helpful to predict the evolution of the system at the level of macroscopic observables. Solving the dynamics of quantum ensembles is nontrivial, requiring modeling of both the quantum spin system and its interaction with the environment with which it exchanges energy. An alternative approach to the dynamics of quantum spin systems was proposed about a decade ago. It involves creating stochastic proxy dynamics via the Suzuki-Trotter mapping of the quantum ensemble to a classical one (the quantum Monte Carlo method), and deriving from this new dynamics closed macroscopic equations for macroscopic observables using the dynamical replica method. In this chapter, we give an introduction to this approach, focusing on the ideas and assumptions behind the derivations, and on its potential and limitations.

Importance sampling scheme for the stochastic simulation of quantum spin dynamics

The numerical simulation of dynamical phenomena in interacting quantum systems is a notoriously hard problem. Although a number of promising numerical methods exist, they often have limited applicability due to the growth of entanglement or the presence of the so-called sign problem. In this work, we develop an importance sampling scheme for the simulation of quantum spin dynamics, building on a recent approach mapping quantum spin systems to classical stochastic processes. The importance sampling scheme is based on identifying the classical trajectory that yields the largest contribution to a given quantum observable. An exact transformation is then carried out to preferentially sample trajectories that are close to the dominant one. We demonstrate that this approach is capable of reducing the temporal growth of fluctuations in the stochastic quantities, thus extending the range of accessible times and system sizes compared to direct sampling. We discuss advantages and limitations of the proposed approach, outlining directions for further developments.

Statistical Floquet prethermalization of the Bose-Hubbard model

The manipulation of many-body systems often involves time-dependent forces that cause unwanted heating. One strategy to suppress heating is to use time-periodic (Floquet) forces at large driving frequencies. For quantum spin systems with bounded spectra, it was shown rigorously that the heating rate is exponentially small in the driving frequency. Recently, such exponential suppression of heating has been observed in an experiment with ultracold atoms, realizing a periodically driven Bose-Hubbard model. This model has an unbounded spectrum and, hence, is beyond the reach of previous theoretical approaches. Here, we study this model with two semiclassical approaches valid, respectively, at large and weak interaction strengths. In both limits, we compute the heating rates by studying the statistical probability to encounter a many-body resonance, and obtain a quantitative agreement with the exact diagonalization of the quantum model. Our approach demonstrates the relevance of statistical arguments to Floquet perthermalization of interacting many-body quantum systems.

Quasi-Locality Bounds for Quantum Lattice Systems. Part II. Perturbations of Frustration-Free Spin Models with Gapped Ground States

We study the stability with respect to a broad class of perturbations of gapped ground-state phases of quantum spin systems defined by frustration-free Hamiltonians. The core result of this work is a proof using the Bravyi–Hastings–Michalakis (BHM) strategy that under a condition of local topological quantum order (LTQO), the bulk gap is stable under perturbations that decay at long distances faster than a stretched exponential. Compared to previous work, we expand the class of frustration-free quantum spin models that can be handled to include models with more general boundary conditions, and models with discrete symmetry breaking. Detailed estimates allow us to formulate sufficient conditions for the validity of positive lower bounds for the gap that are uniform in the system size and that are explicit to some degree. We provide a survey of the BHM strategy following the approach of Michalakis and Zwolak, with alterations introduced to accommodate more general than just periodic boundary conditions and more general lattices. We express the fundamental condition known as LTQO by means of an indistinguishability radius, which we introduce. Using the uniform finite-volume results, we then proceed to study the thermodynamic limit. We first study the case of a unique limiting ground state and then also consider models with spontaneous breaking of a discrete symmetry. In the latter case, LTQO cannot hold for all local observables. However, for perturbations that preserve the symmetry, we show stability of the gap and the structure of the broken symmetry phases. We prove that the GNS Hamiltonian associated with each pure state has a non-zero spectral gap above the ground state.

Accuracy of the typicality approach using Chebyshev polynomials

Trace estimators allow us to approximate thermodynamic equilibrium observables with astonishing accuracy. A prominent representative is the finite-temperature Lanczos method (FTLM) which relies on a Krylov space expansion of the exponential describing the Boltzmann weights. Here we report investigations of an alternative approach which employs Chebyshev polynomials. This method turns out to be also very accurate in general, but shows systematic inaccuracies at low temperatures that can be traced back to an improper behavior of the approximated density of states with and without smoothing kernel. Applications to archetypical quantum spin systems are discussed as examples.

Site-Monotonicity Properties for Reflection Positive Measures with Applications to Quantum Spin Systems

We consider a general statistical mechanics model on a product of local spaces and prove that, if the corresponding measure is reflection positive, then several site-monotonicity properties for the two-point function hold. As an application, we derive site-monotonicity properties for the spin–spin correlation of the quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnet and XY model, we prove that spin-spin correlations are point-wise uniformly positive on vertices with all odd coordinates—improving previous positivity results which hold for the Cesàro sum. We also derive site-monotonicity properties for the probability that a loop connects two vertices in various random loop models, including the loop representation of the spin O(N) model, the double-dimer model, the loop O(N) model and lattice permutations, thus extending the previous results of Lees and Taggi (2019).