Whether one is interested in quantum state preparation or in the design of efficient heat engines, adiabatic (reversible) transformations play a pivotal role in minimizing computational complexity and energy losses. Understanding the structure of these transformations and identifying the systems for which such transformations can be performed efficiently and quickly is therefore of primary importance. In this paper we focus on finding optimal paths in the space of couplings controlling the system's Hamiltonian. More specifically, starting from a local Hamiltonian we analyze directions in the space of couplings along which adiabatic transformations can be accurately generated by local operators, which are both realizable in experiments and easy to simulate numerically. We consider a nonintegrable 1D Ising model parametrized by two independent couplings, corresponding to longitudinal and transverse magnetic fields. We find regions in the space of couplings characterized by a very strong anisotropy of the variational adiabatic gauge potential (AGP), generating the adiabatic transformations, which allows us to define optimal adiabatic paths. We find that these paths generally terminate at singular points characterized by extensive degeneracies in the energy spectrum, splitting the parameter space into adiabatically disconnected regions. The anisotropy follows from singularities in the AGP, and we identify special robust weakly thermalizing and nonabsorbing many-body “dark” states which are annihilated by the singular part of the AGP and show that their existence extends deep into the ergodic regime.

A cardinal obstacle to performing quantum-mechanical simulations of strongly correlated matter is that, with the theoretical tools presently available, sufficiently accurate computations are often too expensive to be ever feasible. Here we design a computational framework combining quantum-embedding (QE) methods with machine learning. This allows us to bypass altogether the most computationally expensive components of QE algorithms, making their overall cost comparable to bare density functional theory. We perform benchmark calculations of a series of actinide systems, where our method accurately describes the correlation effects, reducing by orders of magnitude the computational cost. We argue that, by producing a larger-scale set of training data, it will be possible to apply our method to systems with arbitrary stoichiometries and crystal structures, paving the way to virtually infinite applications in condensed matter physics, chemistry, and materials science.

The quenched dynamics of an ultracold homogeneous atomic two-dimensional Bose gas subjected to periodic quenches across the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition are discussed. Specifically, we address the effect of periodic cycling of the effective atomic interaction strength between a thermal disordered state above and a highly ordered state below the critical BKT interaction strength, by means of numerical simulations of the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Probing the emerging dynamics as a function of the frequency of sinusoidal driving from low to high frequencies reveals diverse dynamical features, including phase-lagged quasiadiabatic reversible condensate formation, resonant excitation consistent with an intrinsic system relaxation timescale, and the gradual establishment of dynamically recurring or time-averaged nonequilibrium states with enhanced coherence, which are neither condensed nor thermal. Our study paves the way for experimental observation of such driven nonequilibrium ultracold superfluid states.

Parafermions are elusive fractional excitations potentially emerging in fractional quantum Hall-superconductor junctions and represent one of the major milestones in fractional quantum matter. However, generic models of parafermions are not analytically solvable, and understanding their topological modes is a bigger challenge than conventional Majorana modes. Here, by using a combination of tensor network and kernel polynomial techniques, we demonstrate the emergence of zero modes and finite energy excitations in many-body parafermion chains. We show the appearance of zero-energy modes in the many-body spectral function at the edge of a topological parafermion chain, their relation with the topological degeneracy of the system, and we compare their physics with the Majorana bound states of topological superconductors. We demonstrate the robustness of parafermion topological modes with respect to a variety of perturbations, and we show how weakly coupled parafermion chains give rise to in-gap excitations. Our results exemplify the versatility of tensor network methods for studying dynamical excitations of interacting parafermion chains and highlight the robustness of topological modes in parafermion models.

We establish that two-dimensional dipolar quantum gases admit a universal description, i.e., their thermodynamic properties are independent of details of the interaction at short distances. The only relevant parameters are the dipole length as well as the scattering length of the combined short-range plus dipolar interaction potential. We derive adiabatic relations that link the change in the thermodynamic potentials with respect to the scattering length and the dipole length to a generalized Tan contact parameter and a new dipolar contact, which involves an integral of a short-distance regularized pair distribution function. These two quantities determine the scale anomaly in the difference between pressure and energy density and also the internal energy in the presence of a harmonic confinement. For a weak transverse confinement, configurations with attractive interactions appear, which lead to a density-wave instability beyond a critical strength of the dipolar interaction. We show that this instability essentially coincides with the onset of a roton minimum in the excitation spectrum and may be understood in terms of a quantum analog of the Hansen-Verlet criterion for freezing of a classical fluid.

The interplay between measurement and quantum correlations in many-body systems can lead to novel types of collective phenomena which are not accessible in isolated systems. In this work, we merge the Zeno paradigm of quantum measurement theory with the concept of polarons in condensed-matter physics. The resulting quantum-Zeno Fermi polaron is a quasiparticle which emerges for lossy impurities interacting with a quantum-degenerate bath of fermions. For loss rates of the order of the impurity-fermion binding energy, the quasiparticle is short lived. However, we show that in the strongly dissipative regime of large loss rates a long-lived polaron branch reemerges. This quantum-Zeno Fermi polaron originates from the nontrivial interplay between the Fermi surface and the surface of the momentum region forbidden by the quantum-Zeno projection. The situation we consider here is realized naturally for polaritonic impurities in charge-tunable semiconductors and can be also implemented using dressed atomic states in ultracold gases.

Understanding the collective behavior of strongly correlated electrons in materials remains a central problem in many-particle quantum physics. A minimal description of these systems is provided by the disordered Fermi-Hubbard model (DFHM), which incorporates the interplay of motion in a disordered lattice with local interparticle interactions. Despite its minimal elements, many dynamical properties of the DFHM are not well understood, owing to the complexity of systems combining out-of-equilibrium behavior, interactions, and disorder in higher spatial dimensions. Here, we study the relaxation dynamics of doubly occupied lattice sites in the three-dimensional DFHM using interaction-quench measurements on a quantum simulator composed of fermionic atoms confined in an optical lattice. In addition to observing the widely studied effect of disorder inhibiting relaxation, we find that the cooperation between strong interactions and disorder also leads to the emergence of a dynamical regime characterized by disorder-enhanced relaxation. To support these results, we develop an approximate numerical method and a phenomenological model that each capture the essential physics of the decay dynamics. Our results provide a theoretical framework for a previously inaccessible regime of the DFHM and demonstrate the ability of quantum simulators to enable understanding of complex many-body systems through minimal models.

The spin-orbit interaction lies at the heart of quantum computation with spin qubits, research on topologically nontrivial states, and various applications in spintronics. Hole spins in Ge/Si core/shell nanowires experience a spin-orbit interaction that has been predicted to be both strong and electrically tunable, making them a particularly promising platform for research in these fields. We experimentally determine the strength of spin-orbit interaction of hole spins confined to a double quantum dot in a Ge/Si nanowire by measuring spin-mixing transitions inside a regime of spin-blockaded transport. We find a remarkably short spin-orbit length of $\sim 65\mathrm{nm}$, comparable to the quantum dot length and the interdot distance. We additionally observe a large orbital effect of the applied magnetic field on the hole states, resulting in a large magnetic field dependence of the spin-mixing transition energies. Strikingly, together with these orbital effects, the strong spin-orbit interaction causes a significant enhancement of the $g$ factor with magnetic field. The large spin-orbit interaction strength demonstrated is consistent with the predicted direct Rashba spin-orbit interaction in this material system and is expected to enable ultrafast Rabi oscillations of spin qubits and efficient qubit-qubit interactions, as well as provide a platform suitable for studying Majorana zero modes.

We develop a method based on tensor networks to create localized single-particle excitations on top of strongly correlated quantum spin chains. In analogy to the problem of creating localized Wannier modes, this is achieved by optimizing the gauge freedom of momentum excitations on top of matrix product states. The corresponding wave packets propagate almost dispersionlessly. The time-dependent variational principle is used to scatter two such wave packets, and we extract the phase shift from the collision data. We also study reflection and transmission coefficients of a wave packet impinging on an impurity.

Realizing the promise of quantum information processing remains a daunting task given the omnipresence of noise and error. Adapting noise-resilient classical computing modalities to quantum mechanics may be a viable path towards near-term applications in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era. Here, we propose continuous variable quantum reservoir computing in a single nonlinear oscillator. Through numerical simulation of our model we demonstrate quantum-classical performance improvement and identify its likely source: the nonlinearity of quantum measurement. Beyond quantum reservoir computing, this result may impact the interpretation of results across quantum machine learning. We study how the performance of our quantum reservoir depends on Hilbert space dimension, how it is impacted by injected noise, and briefly comment on its experimental implementation. Our results show that quantum reservoir computing in a single nonlinear oscillator is an attractive modality for quantum computing on near-term hardware.

Recently, we have experimentally observed signatures of sharp exciton peaks in the photoluminescence spectra of bundles of monoatomic carbon chains stabilized by gold nanoparticles and deposited on a glass substrate. Here we estimate the characteristic energies of excitonic transitions in this complex quasi-one-dimensional nanosystem with use of the variational method. We show that the characteristic energy scale for the experimentally observed excitonic fine structure is governed by the interplay between the hopping energy in a Van der Waals quasicrystal formed by parallel carbon chains, neutral-charged exciton splitting, and positive-negative trion splitting. These three characteristic energies are an order of magnitude lower than the direct exciton binding energy.

FeSeTe has recently emerged as a leading candidate material for the two-dimensional topological superconductivity (TSC). Two reasons for the excitement are the high $T_c$ of the system and the fact that the Majorana zero modes (MZMs) inside the vortex cores live on the exposed surface rather than at the interface of a heterostructure as in the proximitized topological insulators. However, the recent scanning tunneling spectroscopy data have shown that, contrary to the theoretical expectation, the MZM does not exist inside every vortex core. Hence there are “full” vortices with MZMs and “empty” vortices without MZMs. Moreover, the fraction of “empty” vortices increases with an increase in the magnetic field. We propose the possibility of two distinct gapped states competing for the topological surface states in FeSeTe: the TSC and half quantum anomalous Hall (hQAH). The latter is promoted by a magnetic field through the alignment of impurity magnetic moments such as Fe interstitials. When hQAH takes over the topological surface state, the surface will become transparent to scanning tunneling microscopy and the nature of the vortices in such regions will appear identical to what is expected of the vortices in the bulk, i.e., empty. The unmistakable signature of the proposed mechanism for empty vortices will be the existance of chiral Majorana modes(CMM) at the domain wall between an hQAH region and a TSC region. Such CMMs should be observable by measuring local density of states along a line connecting an empty vortex to a nearby full vortex.

We present a method to construct pseudo-BCS wave functions from the one-body density matrix. The resulting many-body wave function, which can be produced for any fermion systems, including those with purely repulsive interactions, has the form of a number-projected BCS form, or antisymmetrized geminal power (AGP). Such wave functions provide a better ansatz for correlated fermion systems than a single Slater determinant, and often better than a linear combination of Slater determinants (for example from a truncated active space calculation). We describe a procedure to build such a wave function conveniently from a given reduced density matrix of the system, rather than from a mean-field solution (which gives a Slater determinant for repulsive interactions). The pseudo-BCS wave function thus obtained reproduces the density matrix or minimizes the difference between the input and resulting density matrices. One application of the pseudo-BCS wave function is in auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) calculations as the trial wave function to control the sign/phase problem. AFQMC is often among the most accurate general methods for correlated fermion systems. We show that the pseudo-BCS form further reduces the constraint bias and leads to improved accuracy compared to the usual Slater determinant trial wave functions, using the two-dimensional Hubbard model as an example. Furthermore, the pseudo-BCS trial wave function allows a new systematically improvable self-consistent approach, with pseudo-BCS trial wave function iteratively generated by AFQMC via the one-body density matrix.

We characterize the Casimir forces for the Dirac vacuum on free-fermionic chains with smoothly varying hopping amplitudes, which correspond to ($1+1$)-dimensional [($1+1$)D] curved spacetimes with a static metric in the continuum limit. The first-order energy potential for an obstacle on that lattice corresponds to the Newtonian potential associated with the metric, while the finite-size corrections are described by a curved extension of the conformal field theory predictions, including a suitable boundary term. We show that for weak deformations of the Minkowski metric, Casimir forces measured by a local observer at the boundary are universal. We provide numerical evidence for our results on a variety of ($1+1$)D deformations: Minkowski, Rindler, anti–de Sitter (the so-called rainbow system), and sinusoidal metrics. Moreover, we show that interactions do not preclude our conclusions, exemplifying this with the deformed Heisenberg chain.

The planar Hall effect (PHE) is the appearance of an in-plane transverse voltage in the presence of coplanar electric and magnetic fields. Its hallmark is a characteristic $\pi$ periodic, i.e., even under a magnetic-field reversal, angular dependence with the transverse voltage that exactly vanishes when the electric and magnetic fields are aligned. Here we demonstrate that in two-dimensional trigonal crystals Zeeman-induced nontrivial Berry curvature effects yield a previously unknown anomalous PHE that is odd in the magnetic field and independent of the relative angle with the driving electric field. We further show that when an additional mirror symmetry forces the transverse voltage to vanish in the linear-response regime, the anomalous PHE can occur as a second-order response at both zero and twice the frequency of the applied electric field. We demonstrate that this nonlinear PHE possesses an antisymmetric quantum contribution that originates from a Zeeman-induced Berry curvature dipole.

The discrete truncated Wigner approximation (DTWA) is a powerful tool for analyzing dynamics of quantum spin systems. Since the DTWA includes the leading-order quantum corrections to a mean-field approximation, it is naturally expected that the DTWA becomes more accurate when the range of interactions of the system increases. However, quantitative corroboration of this expectation is still lacking mainly because it is generally difficult in a large system to evaluate a timescale on which the DTWA is quantitatively valid. In order to investigate how the validity timescale depends on the interaction range, we analyze dynamics of quantum spin models with a step function type interaction subjected to a sudden quench of a magnetic field by means of both DTWA and its extension including the second-order correction, which is derived from the Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon equation. We also develop a formulation for calculating the second-order Rényi entropy within the framework of the DTWA. By comparing the time evolution of the Rényi entropy computed by the DTWA with that by the extension including the correction, we find that both in the one- and two-dimensional systems the validity timescale increases algebraically with the range of the step function type interaction.

We examine the magnetic susceptibility of topological insulators microscopically and find that the orbital-Zeeman (OZ) cross term, the cross term between the orbital effect and the spin Zeeman effect, is directly related to the Berry curvature when the $z$ component of spin is conserved. In particular, the OZ cross term reflects the spin Chern number, which results in the quantization of the magnetic susceptibility jump at the topological phase transition. The magnitude of the jump is in units of the universal value $4\left|e\right|{\mu }_B/h$. We also apply the obtained formula to an explicit model and demonstrate the quantization. For this model, the physical origin of this quantization is clarified.

We build exactly solvable lattice Hamiltonians for fermionic symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases in ($3+1$)D classified by group supercohomology. A central benefit of our construction is that it produces an explicit finite-depth quantum circuit (FDQC) that prepares the ground state from an unentangled symmetric state. The FDQC allows us to clearly demonstrate the characteristic properties of supercohomology phases—namely, symmetry fractionalization on fermion parity flux loops—predicted by continuum formulations. By composing the corresponding FDQCs, we also recover the stacking relations of supercohomology phases. Furthermore, we derive topologically ordered gapped boundaries for the supercohomology models by extending the protecting symmetries, analogous to the construction of topologically ordered boundaries for bosonic SPT phases. Our approach relies heavily on dualities that relate certain bosonic 2-group SPT phases with supercohomology SPT phases. We develop physical motivation for the dualities in terms of explicit lattice prescriptions for gauging a 1-form symmetry and for condensing emergent fermions. We also comment on generalizations to supercohomology phases in higher dimensions and to fermionic SPT phases outside of the supercohomology framework.

The celebrated tenfold way of Altland-Zirnbauer symmetry classes discern any quantum system by its pattern of nonspatial symmetries. It lays at the core of the periodic table of topological insulators and superconductors which provided a complete classification of weakly interacting electrons' noncrystalline topological phases for all symmetry classes. Over recent years, a plethora of topological phenomena with diverse surface states has been discovered in crystalline materials. In this paper, we obtain an exhaustive classification of topologically distinct ground states as well as topological phases with anomalous surface states of crystalline topological insulators and superconductors for key space-groups, layer-groups, and rod-groups. This is done in a unified manner for the full tenfold way of Altland-Zirnbauer nonspatial symmetry classes. We establish a comprehensive paradigm that harnesses the modern mathematical framework of equivariant spectra; it allows us to obtain results applicable to generic topological classification problems. In particular, this paradigm provides efficient computational tools that enable an inherently unified treatment of the full tenfold way.

Nonmagnetic impurities can lift the accidental degeneracy of unconventional pairing states, such as the $(d+ig)$-wave state recently proposed for ${\mathrm{Sr}}_2{\mathrm{RuO}}_4$. This type of effect would lead to a superconducting double transition upon impurity doping. In a model calculation it is shown how this behavior depends on material parameters and how it could be detected.