Condensed Matter

Long-range quantum entanglement is now being recognized as a key characteristic of many novel states of quantum matter. The description of this entanglement requires the introduction of emergent “gauge fields”, much like those found in Maxwell’s theory of light. I will highlight some recent experiments on the copper-based high temperature superconductors, and interpret them using theories of emergent gauge fields.

In the rst part of this talk I will give a brief introduction to the variational class of continuous
matrix product states (cMPS). Then I will present a time evolution algorithm for cMPS with periodic
boundary conditions. In the second part, I will explain how to apply this method to simulate
atomtronic circuits. In particular, I will show results for persistent currents in an interacting bose
gas rotating in a ring shaped trap in the presence of an arti cial U(1) gauge potential.

We introduce the spectrum bifurcation renormalization group (SBRG) as an improvement of the excited-state real space renormalization group (RSRG-X) for qubit models. Starting from a disordered many-body Hamiltonian in the full many-body localized (MBL) phase, the SBRG flows to the MBL fixed-point Hamiltonian, and generates the local integrals of motion and the matrix product state representations for all eigenstates. The method is applicable to both spin and fermion models with arbitrary interaction strength on any lattice in all dimensions, as long as the models are in the full MBL phase. As a Hilbert-space preserving RG, the SBRG also generates an entanglement holographic mapping, which duals the MBL state to a fragmented holographic space.

In this talk, I present a new framework for topologically ordered gapped ground states in 2+1 spacetime dimensions (which generalizes to higher dimensions) using tensor networks. We will see that topological order can exist in tensor network states (TNS), if the local tensor satisfies certain axioms which we call MPO (matrix product operator)-injectivity and pulling through. We then continue with examples, and see how renormalization fixed point models in the literature (Levin-Wen models, etc.) can be covered in this framework. If time permits, we finish with a discussion of excitations and the generalization to higher dimensions.

We investigate the properties of Chern-Simons theory coupled to massive fermions at finite density. In the large N limit, this is solvable to all orders in the coupling and we use this as a playground for investigating the behavior of strongly correlated condensed matter systems. At low temperatures the system enters a Fermi liquid state whose features may be compared to the phenomenological theory of Landau Fermi liquids and our analysis indicates the need to augment this framework to properly characterize parity odd transport. Furthermore, an investigation of the equation of state reveals novel phenomena at strong coupling. As the interaction strength is tuned to infinity, the system exhibits an extended intermediate regime in which the thermodynamics is described by neither Fermi liquid theory nor the classical ideal gas law. Instead, it can be interpreted as a weakly coupled quantum Bose gas.

We present an effective Z2 gauge theory that captures various competing phases in spin-1/2 kagome lattice antiferromagnets: the topological Z2 spin liquid (SL) phase, and the 12-site and 36- site valence bond solid (VBS) phases. Our effective theory is a generalization of the recent Z2 gauge theory proposed for SL phases by Wan and Tchernyshyov. In particular, we investigate possible VBS phases that arise from vison condensations in the SL. In addition to the 12-site and 36-site VBS phases, there exists 6-site VBS that is closely related to the symmetry-breaking valence bond modulation patterns observed in the recent density matrix renormalization group simulations. We find that our results have remarkable consistency with a previous study using a different Z2 gauge theory. Motivated by the lattice geometry in the recently reported vanadium oxyfluoride kagome antiferromagnet, our gauge theory is extended to incorporate lowered symmetry by inequivalent up- and down-triangles. We investigate effects of this anisotropy on the 12-site, 36-site, and 6-site VBS phases. Particularly, interesting dimer melting effects are found in the 36-site VBS. We discuss the implications of our findings and also compare the results with a different type of Z2 gauge theory used in previous studies.

In recent years, entanglement has become a new frontier with applications across several fields in physics. Nevertheless, simple conceptual pictures and practical ways to quantify entanglement in many-body systems have remained elusive even for the simplest models. In this talk, I will consider entanglement and Renyi entropies as well as quantum (mutual, tripartite, etc.) information in a quantum field theory. For free field theories, I will show that quantum entropies and information can be computed and understood by analogy with the thermal Casimir effect in one higher dimension. Furthermore, I will introduce a geometrical picture for the quantum (mutual, tripartite) information as a sum over polymers establishing a connection to purely entropic effects that prove useful in deriving information inequalities.  Finally, I will show that similar ideas may be extended beyond free field theories.

Many-body systems with both coherent dynamics and dissipation constitute a rich class of models which are nevertheless much less explored than their dissipationless counterparts. The advent of numerous experimental platforms that simulate such dynamics poses an immediate challenge to systematically understand and classify these models. In particular, nontrivial many-body states emerge as steady states under non-equilibrium dynamics. In this talk, I use a systematic approach based on the Keldysh formalism to study nonequilibrium phases and phase transitions in such models. I show that an effective thermal behavior generically emerges as a result of dissipation, and the universal behavior including the dynamics near the steady state is described by a universality class in equilibrium thermodynamics. In the end, I will also discuss possibilities that go beyond the paradigm of an effective thermal behaviour.

Recent experiments show that charge-density wave correlations are prevalent in underdoped cuprate superconductors. The correlations are short-ranged at weak magnetic fields but their intensity and spatial extent increase rapidly at low temperatures beyond a crossover field. Here we consider the possibility of long-range charge-density wave order in a model of a layered system where such order competes with superconductivity. We show that in the clean limit, low-temperature long-range order is stabilized by arbitrarily weak magnetic fields. This apparent discrepancy with the experiments is resolved by the presence of disorder. Like the field, disorder nucleates halos of charge-density wave, but unlike the former it also disrupts inter-halo coherence, leading to a correlation length that is always finite. Our results are compatible with various experimental trends, including the onset of longer range correlations induced by inter-layer coupling above a characteristic field scale.

The iron chalcogenide FeSe has attracted much recent interest due to a high superconducting transition in monolayer samples. In bulk samples, nematic order is seen without the presence of magnetic order, hinting at the importance of nematic order in determining the monolayer properties. More generally, there has been growing evidence of the importance of nematic fluctuations in a variety of strongly correlated high-temperature superconductors. We study an effective two band model of the iron-pnictides with interactions that capture the nematic ordering arising from spontaneous symmetry breaking between the two orbitals. These models are sign-problem free and can be simulated in an unbiased fashion using Determinant Quantum Monte Carlo. We find a variety of unexpected orders and consider the effects of the nematic fluctuations on superconductivity. 

Concepts of information theory are increasingly used to characterize collective phenomena in condensed matter systems, such as the use of entanglement entropies to identify emergent topological order in interacting quantum many-body systems. Here we employ classical variants of these concepts, in particular Renyi entropies and their associated mutual information, to identify topological order in classical systems.

Like for their quantum counterparts, the presence of topological order can be identified in such classical systems via a universal, subleading contribution to the prevalent volume and boundary laws of the classical Renyi entropies. We demonstrate that an additional subleading O(1) contribution generically arises for all Renyi entropies S(n) with n ≥ 2 when driving the system towards a phase transition, e.g. into a conventionally ordered phase. This additional subleading term, which we dub connectivity contribution, tracks back to partial subsystem ordering and is proportional to the number of connected parts in a given bipartition. Notably, the Levin-Wen summation scheme – typically used to extract the topological contribution to the Renyi entropies – does not fully eliminate this additional connectivity contribution in this classical context. This indicates that the distillation of topological order from Renyi entropies requires an additional level of scrutiny to distinguish topological from non-topological O(1) contributions. This is also the case for quantum systems, for which we discuss which entropies are sensitive to these connectivity contributions. We showcase these findings by extensive numerical simulations of a classical variant of the toric code model, for which we study the stability of topological order in the presence of a magnetic field and at finite temperatures from a Renyi entropy perspective.