The quasi-particle picture is a powerful tool to understand the entanglement spreading in many-body quantum systems after a quench. As an input, the structure of the excitations' pattern of the initial state must be provided, the common choice being pairwise-created excitations. However, several cases exile this simple assumption. In this work, we investigate weakly-interacting to free quenches in one dimension. This results in a far richer excitations' pattern where multiplets with a larger number of particles are excited. We generalize the quasi-particle ansatz to such a wide class of initial states, providing a small-coupling expansion of the Renyi entropies. Our results are in perfect agreement with iTEBD numerical simulations.
We address the hydrodynamics of operator spreading in interacting integrable lattice models. In these models, operators spread through the ballistic propagation of quasiparticles, with an operator front whose velocity is locally set by the fastest quasiparticle velocity. In interacting integrable systems, this velocity depends on the density of the other quasiparticles, so equilibrium density fluctuations cause the front to follow a biased random walk, and therefore to broaden diffusively. Ballistic front propagation and diffusive front broadening are also generically present in non-integrable…
We extend the semiclassical picture for the spreading of entanglement and correlations to quantum quenches with several species of quasiparticles that have non-trivial pair correlations in momentum space. These pair correlations are, for example, relevant in inhomogeneous lattice models with a periodically-modulated Hamiltonian parameter. We provide explicit predictions for the spreading of the entanglement entropy in the space-time scaling limit. We also predict the time evolution of one- and two-point functions of the order parameter for quenches within the ordered phase. We test all our pre…
Understanding the spreading of quantum correlations in out-of-equilibrium many-body systems is one of the major challenges in physics. For {\it isolated} systems, a hydrodynamic theory explains the origin and spreading of entanglement via the propagation of quasi-particle pairs. However, when systems interact with their surrounding much less has been established. Here we show that the quasi-particle picture remains valid for open quantum systems: while information is still spread by quasiparticles, the environment modifies their correlation and introduces incoherent and mixing effects. For fre…
We review different tensor network approaches to study the spreading of operators in generic nonintegrable quantum systems. As a common ground to all methods, we quantify this spreading by means of the Frobenius norm of the commutator of a spreading operator with a local operator, which is usually referred to as the out of time order correlation (OTOC) function. We compare two approaches based on matrix-product states in the Schrödinger picture: the time dependent block decimation (TEBD) and the time dependent variational principle (TDVP), as well as TEBD based on matrix-product operators dire…
We study the spreading of entanglement produced by the time evolution of a local fermionic excitation created above the ground state of the XXZ chain. The resulting entropy profiles are investigated via density-matrix renormalization group calculations, and compared to a quasiparticle ansatz. In particular, we assume that the entanglement is dominantly carried by spinon excitations traveling at different velocities, and the entropy profile is reproduced by a probabilistic expression involving the density fraction of the spinons reaching the subsystem. The ansatz works well in the gapless phase…
We analyze the dynamics of entanglement in a paradigmatic noninteracting system subject to continuous monitoring of the local excitation densities. Recently, it was conjectured that the evolution of quantum correlations in such system is described by a semi-classical theory, based on entangled pairs of ballistically propagating quasiparticles and inspired by the hydrodynamic approach to unitary (integrable) quantum systems. Here, however, we show that this conjecture does not fully capture the complex behavior of quantum correlations emerging from the interplay between coherent dynamics and co…
We study the entanglement dynamics generated by quantum quenches in the quantum cellular automaton Rule $54$. We consider the evolution from a recently introduced class of solvable initial states. States in this class relax (locally) to a one-parameter family of Gibbs states and the thermalisation dynamics of local observables can be characterised exactly by means of an evolution in space. Here we show that the latter approach also gives access to the entanglement dynamics and derive exact formulas describing the asymptotic linear growth of all Rényi entropies in the thermodynamic limit and th…
The study of the moments of the partially transposed density matrix provides a new and effective way of detecting bipartite entanglement in a many-body mixed state. This is valuable for cold-atom and ion-trap experiments, as well as in the general context of quantum simulation of many-body systems. In this work we study the time evolution after a quantum quench of the moments of the partial transpose, and several related quantities, such as the Rényi negativities. By combining Conformal Field Theory (CFT) results with integrability, we show that, in the space-time scaling limit of long times a…
The past few years have witnessed the development of a comprehensive theory to describe integrable systems out of equilibrium, in which the Bethe ansatz formalism has been tailored to address specific problems arising in this context. While most of the work initially focused on the study of prototypical models such as the well-known Heisenberg chain, many theoretical results have been recently extended to a class of more complicated $\it{nested}$ integrable systems, displaying different species of quasiparticles. Still, in the simplest context of quantum quenches, the vast majority of theoreti…
Rényi entropies are conceptually valuable and experimentally relevant generalisations of the celebrated von Neumann entanglement entropy. After a quantum quench in a clean quantum many-body system they generically display a universal linear growth in time followed by saturation. While a finite subsystem is essentially at local equilibrium when the entanglement saturates, it is genuinely out-of-equilibrium in the growth phase. In particular, the slope of the growth carries vital information on the nature of the system's dynamics, and its characterisation is a key objective of current research. …
Understanding the spreading of the operator space entanglement entropy ($OSEE$) is key in order to explore out-of-equilibrium quantum many-body systems. Here we argue that for integrable models the dynamics of the $OSEE$ is related to the diffusion of the underlying quasiparticles. We derive the logarithmic bound $1/2\ln(t)$ for the $OSEE$ of some simple, i.e., low-rank, diagonal local operators. We numerically check that the bound is saturated in the rule $54$ chain, which is representative of interacting integrable systems. Remarkably, the same bound is saturated in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg $…
We consider a molecular dynamics method, the so-called flea gas for computing the evolution of entanglement after inhomogeneous quantum quenches in an integrable quantum system. In such systems the evolution of local observables is described at large space-time scales by the Generalized Hydrodynamics approach, which is based on the presence of stable, ballistically propagating quasiparticles. Recently it was shown that the GHD approach can be joined with the quasiparticle picture of entanglement evolution, providing results for entanglement growth after inhomogeneous quenches. Here we apply th…
These are lecture notes for a short course given at the Les Houches Summer School on ``Integrability in Atomic and Condensed Matter Physics'', in summer 2018. Here, I pedagogically discuss recent advances in the study of the entanglement spreading during the non-equilibrium dynamics of isolated integrable quantum systems. I first introduce the idea that the stationary thermodynamic entropy is the entanglement accumulated during the non-equilibrium dynamics and then join such an idea with the quasiparticle picture for the entanglement spreading to provide quantitive predictions for the time evo…
The time evolution of the entanglement entropy is a key concept to understand the structure of a non-equilibrium quantum state. In a large class of models, such evolution can be understood in terms of a semiclassical picture of moving quasiparticles spreading the entanglement throughout the system. However, it is not yet known how the entanglement splits between the sectors of an internal local symmetry of a quantum many-body system. Here, guided by the examples of conformal field theories and free-fermion chains, we show that the quasiparticle picture can be adapted to this goal, leading to a…
The spreading of entanglement in out-of-equilibrium quantum systems is currently at the centre of intense interdisciplinary research efforts involving communities with interests ranging from holography to quantum information. Here we provide a constructive and mathematically rigorous method to compute the entanglement dynamics in a class of "maximally chaotic", periodically driven, quantum spin chains. Specifically, we consider the so called "self-dual" kicked Ising chains initialised in a class of separable states and devise a method to compute exactly the time evolution of the entanglement e…
We propose a realization of mesonic and baryonic quasiparticle excitations in Rydberg atom arrays with programmable interactions. Recent experiments have shown that such systems possess a $\mathbb{Z}_3$-ordered crystalline phase whose low-energy quasiparticles are defects in the crystalline order. By engineering a $\mathbb{Z}_3$-translational-symmetry breaking field on top of the Rydberg-blockaded Hamiltonian, we show that different types of defects experience confinement, and as a consequence form mesonic or baryonic quasiparticle excitations. We illustrate the formation of these quasiparticl…
The large-scale properties of homogeneous states after quantum quenches in integrable systems have been successfully described by a semiclassical picture of moving quasiparticles. Here we consider the generalisation for the entanglement evolution after an inhomogeneous quench in noninteracting systems in the framework of generalised hydrodynamics. We focus on the protocol where two semi-infinite halves are initially prepared in different states and then joined together, showing that a proper generalisation of the quasiparticle picture leads to exact quantitative predictions. If the system is i…
In quantum many-body dynamics admitting a description in terms of non-interacting quasiparticles, the Feynman-Vernon influence matrix (IM), encoding the effect of the system on the evolution of its local subsystems, can be analyzed exactly. For discrete dynamics, the temporal entanglement (TE) of the corresponding IM satisfies an area law, suggesting the possibility of an efficient representation of the IM in terms of matrix-product states. A natural question is whether and how integrable interactions, which preserve stable quasiparticles, affect the behavior of the TE. While a simple semiclas…
We investigate the crossover of the entanglement entropy towards its thermal value in nearly integrable systems. We employ equation of motion techniques to study the entanglement dynamics in a lattice model of weakly interacting spinless fermions after a quantum quench. For weak enough interactions we observe a two-step relaxation of the entanglement entropies of finite subsystems. Initially the entropies follow a nearly integrable evolution, approaching the value predicted by the Generalized Gibbs Ensemble (GGE) of the unperturbed model. Then, they start a slow drift towards the thermal stati…
Quenched randomness can have a dramatic effect on the dynamics of isolated 1D quantum many-body systems, even for systems that thermalize. This is because transport, entanglement, and operator spreading can be hindered by `Griffiths' rare regions which locally resemble the many-body-localized phase and thus act as weak links. We propose coarse-grained models for entanglement growth and for the spreading of quantum operators in the presence of such weak links. We also examine entanglement growth across a single weak link numerically. We show that these weak links have a stronger effect on entan…
The Rényi entropies of quasiparticle excitations in the many-body gapped systems show a remarkable universal picture which can be understood partially by combination of a semiclassical argument with the quantum effect of (in)distinguishability. The universal Rényi entropies are independent of the model, the quasiparticle momenta, and the connectedness of the subsystem. In this letter we calculate exactly the single-interval and double-interval Rényi entropies of quasiparticle excitations in the many-body gapped fermions, bosons, and XY chains. We find additional contributions to the universal …
We analyze the excitation spectrum of a three-dimensional(3D) Bose-Fermi mixture with tunable resonant interaction parameters and high hyperfine spin multiplets. We focus on a 3-particle vertex describing fermionic and bosonic atoms which can scatter to create fermionic molecules or disassociate. For a single molecular level, in analogy to the single magnetic impurity problem we argue that the low lying excitations of the mean-field theory are described by the Fermi liquid picture with a quasiparticle weight and charge which is justified by a $1/N_ψ$ expansion, expected to be exact in the limi…
We study elementary excitations of a system of one-dimensional bosons with weak contact repulsion. We show that the Gross-Pitaevskii regime, in which the excitations are the well-known Bogoliubov quasiparticles and dark solitons, does not extend to the low energy limit. Instead, the spectra of both excitations have finite curvatures at zero momentum, in agreement with the phenomenological picture of fermionic quasiparticles. We describe analytically the crossover between the Gross-Pitaevskii and the low-energy regimes, and discuss implications of our results for the behavior of the dynamic str…
