Emergent Hydrodynamics in Nonequilibrium Quantum Systems

Bingtian Ye, Francisco Machado, Christopher David White, Roger S. K. Mong, and Norman Y. Yao
Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 030601 – Published 15 July 2020
PDFHTMLExport Citation

Abstract

A tremendous amount of recent attention has focused on characterizing the dynamical properties of periodically driven many-body systems. Here, we use a novel numerical tool termed “density matrix truncation” (DMT) to investigate the late-time dynamics of large-scale Floquet systems. We find that DMT accurately captures two essential pieces of Floquet physics, namely, prethermalization and late-time heating to infinite temperature. Moreover, by implementing a spatially inhomogeneous drive, we demonstrate that an interplay between Floquet heating and diffusive transport is crucial to understanding the system’s dynamics. Finally, we show that DMT also provides a powerful method for quantitatively capturing the emergence of hydrodynamics in static (undriven) Hamiltonians; in particular, by simulating the dynamics of generic, large-scale quantum spin chains (up to L=100), we are able to directly extract the energy diffusion coefficient.

  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Received 7 August 2019
  • Revised 13 November 2019
  • Accepted 16 June 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.030601

© 2020 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Atomic, Molecular & OpticalCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Bingtian Ye1,*, Francisco Machado1,*, Christopher David White2, Roger S. K. Mong3,4, and Norman Y. Yao1,5

  • 1Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 2Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, Caltech, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA
  • 4Pittsburgh Quantum Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA
  • 5Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

  • *These two authors contributed equally to this work.

Article Text (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand

Supplemental Material (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand

References (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand
Issue

Vol. 125, Iss. 3 — 17 July 2020

Reuse & Permissions
Access Options
Author publication services for translation and copyediting assistance advertisement

Authorization Required


×
×

Images

×

Sign up to receive regular email alerts from Physical Review Letters

Log In

Cancel
×

Search


Article Lookup

Paste a citation or DOI

Enter a citation
×