We employ the Quench Action Method (QAM) for a recently considered geometrical quantum quench: two free fermionic chains initially at different temperatures are joined together in the middle and let evolve unitarily with a translation invariant Hamiltonian. We show that two different stationary regimes are reached at long times, depending on the interplay between the observation time scale T and the total length L of the system. We show the emergence of a non-equilibrium steady state (NESS) supporting an energy current for observation time T much smaller than the system size L. We then identify a longer time-scale for which thermalization occurs in a Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE).
We study the response of a particle current to dissipative dephasing in an interacting, few-body fermionic lattice system. The particles are prepared in the ground state in presence of an artificial magnetic gauge field, which is subsequently quenched to zero. The initial current decays non-trivially in the dissipative environment and we explore the emerging dynamics and its dependence on various system parameters.
We investigate a class of exactly solvable quantum quench protocols with a finite quench rate in systems of one dimensional non-relativistic fermions in external harmonic oscillator or inverted harmonic oscillator potentials, with time dependent masses and frequencies. These hamiltonians arise, respectively, in harmonic traps, and the $c=1$ Matrix Model description of two dimensional string theory with time dependent string coupling. We show how the dynamics is determined by a single function of time which satisfies a generalized Ermakov-Pinney equation. The quench protocols we consider asympt…
We consider the non-equilibrium dynamics of a system of interacting massless fermions in a ring threaded by a magnetic flux. We focus on the quench where the flux is initially vanishing and is then turned on. We show that the definition of the limit of abrupt quench is problematic due to the presence of gauge invariance that has to be taken into account. We then propose a specific protocol where the dynamics is non-trivial. Employing techniques coming from the Algebraic Bethe-Ansatz, we present an exact formula for the Loschmidt echo valid at all times as a Fredholm determinant at the free fer…
We analyse quench processes in two dimensional quantum field theories with infinite number of conservation laws which also include fermionic charges that close a $N=1$ supersymmetric algebra. While in general the quench protocol induces a breaking of supersymmetry, we show that there are particular initial states which ensure the persistence of supersymmetry also for the dynamics out of equilibrium. We discuss the conditions that identify such states and, as application, we present the significant cases of the Tricritical Ising Model and the Sine-Gordon model at its supersymmetric point. We al…
We consider the asymptotic state after a sudden quench of the magnetic field in the transverse field quantum Ising chain starting from excited states of the pre-quench Hamiltonian. We compute the thermodynamic entropies of the generalised Gibbs and the diagonal ensembles and we find that the generalised Gibbs entropy is always twice the diagonal one. We show that particular care should be taken in extracting the thermodynamic limit since different averages of equivalent microstates give different results for the entropies.
We consider the non-equilibrium physics induced by joining together two tight binding fermionic chains to form a single chain. Before being joined, each chain is in a many-fermion ground state. The fillings (densities) in the two chains might be the same or different. We present a number of exact results for the correlation functions in the non-interacting case. We present a short-time expansion, which can sometimes be fully resummed, and which reproduces the so-called `light cone' effect or wavefront behavior of the correlators. For large times, we show how all interesting physical regimes ma…
We consider the stationary state properties of the reduced density matrix as well as spin-spin correlation functions after a sudden quantum quench of the magnetic field in the transverse field Ising chain. We demonstrate that stationary state properties are described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble. We discuss the approach to the stationary state at late times.
We consider a quantum quench in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg XXZ chain. At late times after the quench it is believed that the expectation values of local operators approach time-independent values, that are described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble. Employing a quantum transfer matrix approach we show how to determine short-range correlation functions in such generalized Gibbs ensembles for a class of initial states.
We compute the total amount of entanglement produced between momentum modes at late times after a smooth mass quench in free bosonic and fermionic quantum field theories. The entanglement and Rényi entropies are obtained in closed form as a function of the parameters characterizing the quench protocol. For bosons, we show that the entanglement production is more significant for light modes and for fast quenches. In particular, infinitely slow or adiabatic quenches do not produce any entanglement. Depending on the quench profile, the decrease as a function of the quench rate $δt$ can be either …
We consider the non-equilibrium dynamics after a sudden quench of the magnetic field in the transverse field Ising chain starting from excited states of the pre-quench Hamiltonian. We prove that stationary values of local correlation functions can be described by the generalised Gibbs ensemble (GGE). Then we study the full time evolution of the transverse magnetisation by means of stationary phase methods. The equal time two-point longitudinal correlation function is analytically derived for a particular class of excited states for quenches within the ferromagnetic phase, and studied numerical…
We study the time evolution in the transverse-field Ising chain subject to quantum quenches of finite duration, ie, a continuous change in the transverse magnetic field over a finite time. Specifically, we consider the dynamics of the total energy, one- and two-point correlation functions and Loschmidt echo during and after the quench as well as their stationary behaviour at late times. We investigate how different quench protocols affect the dynamics and identify universal properties of the relaxation.
We consider quantum quenches to the sinh-Gordon integrable quantum field theory from a particular class of initial states. Our analysis includes the case of mass and interaction quenches starting from a non-interacting theory. By means of the recently developed quench action method, we fully characterize the stationary state reached at long times after the quench in terms of the corresponding rapidity distribution. We also provide exact results for the expectation values of arbitrary vertex operators in the post-quench stationary state by proposing a formula based on the analogy with the stand…
We use the Quench Action approach to study the non-equilibrium dynamics after a quantum quench in the Hubbard model in the limit of infinite interaction. We identify a variety of low-entangled initial states for which we can directly compute the overlaps with the Hamiltonian's eigenstates. For these initial states, we analytically find the rapidity distributions of the stationary state characterising the expectation values of all local observables. Some of the initial states considered are not reflection symmetric and lead to non-symmetric rapidity distributions. To study such cases, we have t…
Motivated by recent experiments on interacting cold atoms, we analyze interaction quenches in Luttinger liquids (LL), where the interaction is ramped from zero to a finite value within a finite time. The fermionic single particle density matrix reveals several regions of spatial and temporal coordinates relative to the quench time, termed as Fermi liquid, sudden quench LL, adiabatic LL regimes, and a LL regime with time dependent exponent. The various regimes can also be observed in the momentum distribution of the fermions, directly accessible through time of flight experiments. Most of our r…
We formulate and discuss explicit computation of dynamic correlation functions in open quadradic fermionic systems which are driven and dissipated by the Lindblad jump processes that are linear in canonical fermionic operators. Dynamic correlators are interpreted in terms of local quantum quench where the pre-quench state is the non-equilibrium steady state, i.e. a fixed point of the Liouvillian. As an example we study the XY spin 1/2 chain and the Kitaev Majorana chains with boundary Lindblad driving, whose dynamics exhibits asymmetric (skewed) light cone behaviour. We also numerically treat …
The (Loschmidt) overlap between the state at different times after a quantum quench is attracting increasing interest, as it was recently shown that in the thermodynamic limit its logarithm per unit of length has a non-analytic behavior if a Hamiltonian parameter is quenched across a critical point. This phenomenon was called a "dynamical phase transition" in analogy with the behavior of the canonical partition function at an equilibrium phase transition. We distinguish between local and nonlocal contributions to the aforementioned quantity and derive an analytic expression for the time evolut…
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of the Luttinger model after suddenly turning on and off the bare Coulomb interaction between the fermions. We analyze several correlation functions such as the one particle density matrix and vertex correlations, its finite time dynamics and the stationary state limit. Correlations exhibit a non-linear light cone effect: the spreading of the initial signal accelerates as a consequence of the quantum nature of the excitations, whose peculiar dispersion of plasmonic type in 1D gives rise to a logarithmic divergence in the group velocity at $q=0$. In additio…
We analyze the entanglement properties of the asymptotic steady state after a quench from free to hard-core bosons in one dimension. The Rényi and von Neumann entanglement entropies are found to be extensive, and the latter coincides with the thermodynamic entropy of the Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE). Computing the spectrum of the two-point function, we provide exact analytical results both for the leading extensive parts and the subleading terms for the entropies as well as for the cumulants of the particle number fluctuations. We also compare the extensive part of the entanglement entropy…
We investigate the growth of the entanglement entropy $S_{\textrm{ent}}$ following global quenches in two-dimensional free fermion models with potential and bond disorder. For the potential disorder case we show that an intermediate weak localization regime exists in which $S_{\textrm{ent}}(t)$ grows logarithmically in time $t$ before Anderson localization sets in. For the case of binary bond disorder near the percolation transition we find additive logarithmic corrections to area and volume laws as well as a scaling at long times which is consistent with an infinite randomness fixed point.
We study quantum quenches to the one-dimensional Bose gas with attractive interactions in the case when the initial state is an ideal one-dimensional Bose condensate. We focus on properties of the stationary state reached at late times after the quench. This displays a finite density of multi-particle bound states, whose rapidity distribution is determined exactly by means of the quench action method. We discuss the relevance of the multi-particle bound states for the physical properties of the system, computing in particular the stationary value of the local pair correlation function $g_2$.
In integrable many-particle systems, it is widely believed that the stationary state reached at late times after a quantum quench can be described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) constructed from their extensive number of conserved charges. A crucial issue is then to identify a complete set of these charges, enabling the GGE to provide exact steady state predictions. Here we solve this long-standing problem for the case of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain by explicitly constructing a GGE which uniquely fixes the macrostate describing the stationary behaviour after a general quantum quench. …
We consider the unitary time evolution of a one-dimensional quantum system which is in a stationary state for negative times and then undergoes a sudden change (quench) of a parameter of its Hamiltonian at t=0. For systems possessing a continuum limit described by a massive quantum field theory we investigate in general perturbative quenches for the case in which the theory is integrable before the quench.
Quantum entanglement may have various origins ranging from solely interaction-driven quantum correlations to single-particle effects. Here, we explore the dependence of entanglement on time-dependent single-particle basis transformations in fermionic quantum many-body systems, thus aiming at isolating single-particle sources of entanglement growth in quench dynamics. Using exact diagonalization methods, for paradigmatic non-integrable models we compare to the standard real space cut various physically motivated bipartitions. Moreover, we search for a minimal entanglement basis using local opti…
We consider an interaction quench in the critical spin-1/2 Heisenberg XXZ chain. We numerically compute the time evolution of the two-point correlation functions of spin operators in the thermodynamic limit and compare the results to predictions obtained in the framework of the Luttinger liquid approximation. We find that the transverse correlation function $\langle S^x_jS^x_{j+\ell}\rangle$ agrees with the Luttinger model prediction to a surprising level of accuracy. The agreement for the longitudinal two-point function $\langle S^z_jS^z_{j+\ell}\rangle$ is found to be much poorer. We specula…
We study thermalization in a one-dimensional quantum system consisting of a noninteracting fermionic chain with each site of the chain coupled to an additional bath site. Using a density matrix renormalization group algorithm we investigate the time evolution of observables in the chain after a quantum quench. For low densities we show that the intermediate time dynamics can be quantitatively described by a system of coupled equations of motion. For higher densities our numerical results show a prethermalization for local observables at intermediate times and a full thermalization to the grand…
We consider the time evolution following a quantum quench in spin-1/2 chains. It is well known that local conservation laws constrain the dynamics and, eventually, the stationary behavior of local observables. We show that some widely studied models, like the quantum XY model, possess extra families of local conservation laws in addition to the translation invariant ones. As a consequence, the additional charges must be included in the generalized Gibbs ensemble that describes the stationary properties. The effects go well beyond a simple redefinition of the stationary state. The time evolutio…
A typical working condition in the study of quantum quenches is that the initial state produces a distribution of quasiparticle excitations with an opposite-momentum-pair structure. In this work we investigate the dynamical and stationary properties of the entanglement entropy after a quench from initial states which do not have such structure: instead of pairs of excitations they generate $ν$-plets of correlated excitations with $ν>2$. Our study is carried out focusing on a system of non-interacting fermions on the lattice. We study the time evolution of the entanglement entropy showing that …
We consider the non-equilibrium dynamics of a gas of impenetrable bosons released from a harmonic trapping potential to a circle. The many body dynamics is solved analytically and the time dependence of all the physically relevant correlations is described. We prove that, for large times and in the thermodynamic limit, the reduced density matrix of any subsystem converges to a generalized Gibbs ensemble as a consequence of the integrability of the model. We discuss the approach to the stationary behavior at late times. We also describe the time-dependence of the entanglement entropy which atta…
We consider quantum quenches from an ideal Bose condensate to the Lieb-Liniger model with arbitrary attractive interaction strength. We focus on the properties of the non-equilibrium steady state reached at late times after the quench. Using recently developed methods based on integrability, we obtain an exact description of the stationary state for a large number of bosons. A distinctive feature of this state is the presence of a hierarchy of multi-particle bound states. We determine the dependence of their densities on interaction strength and obtain an exact expression for the stationary va…
In this paper we propose an expression for the entanglement entropy of several intervals in a stationary state of a free, translational invariant Hamiltonian in a fermionic chain. We check numerically the accuracy of our proposal and conjecture a new formula for the asymptotic behaviour of principal sub-matrices of a Toeplitz matrix.
We consider the time evolution after quantum quenches in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg XXZ quantum spin chain with Ising-like anisotropy. The time evolution of short-distance spin-spin correlation functions is studied by numerical tensor network techniques for a variety of initial states, including Néel and Majumdar-Ghosh states and the ground state of the XXZ chain at large values of the anisotropy. The various correlators appear to approach stationary values, which are found to be in good agreement with the results of exact calculations of stationary expectation values in appropriate generalized G…
We apply the logic of the quench action to give an exact analytical expression for the time evolution of the one-body density matrix after an interaction quench in the Lieb-Liniger model from the ground state of the free theory (BEC state) to the infinitely repulsive regime. In this limit there exists a mapping between the bosonic wavefuntions and the free fermionic ones but this does not help the computation of the one-body density matrix which is sensitive to particle statistics. The final expression, given in terms of the difference of the square root of two Fredholm determinants, can be nu…
Fluctuation-dissipation relations, i.e., the relation between two-time correlation and linear response functions, were successfully used to search for signs of equilibration and to identify effective temperatures in the non-equilibrium behavior of a number of macroscopic classical and quantum systems in contact with thermal baths. Among the most relevant cases in which the effective temperatures thus defined were shown to have a thermodynamic meaning one finds the stationary dynamics of driven super-cooled liquids and vortex glasses, and the relaxation of glasses. Whether and under which condi…
We consider a quantum quench in a system of free bosons, starting from a thermal initial state. As in the case where the system is initially in the ground state, any finite subsystem eventually reaches a stationary thermal state with a momentum-dependent effective temperature. We find that this can, in some cases, even be lower than the initial temperature. We also study lattice effects and discuss more general types of quenches.
Entanglement pre-thermalization (EP) is a quasi-stationary nonequilibrium state of a composite system in which each individual subsystem looks thermal but the entire system remains nonthermal due to quantum entanglement between subsystems. We theoretically study the dynamics of EP following a coherent split of a one-dimensional harmonic potential in which two interacting bosons are confined. This problem is equivalent to that of an interaction quench between two harmonic oscillators. We show that this simple model captures the bare essentials of EP; that is, each subsystem relaxes to an approx…
We consider a quantum quench in a non-interacting fermionic one-dimensional field-theory. The system of size $L$ is initially prepared into two halves $\mathcal{L}$ ($[-L/2,0]$) and $\mathcal{R}$ ($[0,L/2]$), each of them thermalized at two different temperatures, ${T_{L}}$ and ${T_{R}}$ respectively. At a given time the two halves are joined together by a local coupling and the whole system is left to evolve unitarily. For an infinitely extended system ($L\rightarrow \infty$), we show that the time evolution of the particle and energy densities is well described via a hydrodynamic approach wh…
In this paper we study the statistical properties of a reversible cellular automaton in two out-of-equilibrium settings. In the first part we consider two instances of the initial value problem, corresponding to the inhomogeneous quench and the local quench. Our main result is an exact matrix product expression of the time evolution of the probability distribution, which we use to determine the time evolution of the density profiles analytically. In the second part we study the model on a finite lattice coupled with stochastic boundaries. Once again we derive an exact matrix product expression…
We study the time-dependence of the magnetization profile, m_l(t), of a large finite open quantum Ising chain after a quench. We observe a cyclic variation, in which starting with an exponentially decreasing period the local magnetization arrives to a quasi-stationary regime, which is followed by an exponentially fast reconstruction period. The non-thermal behavior observed at near-surface sites turns over to thermal behavior for bulk sites. Besides the standard time- and length-scales a non-standard time-scale is identified in the reconstruction period.
