Compact lattice U(1) and Seiberg-Witten duality: a quantitative comparison

It was conjectured some time ago that an effective description of the Coulomb-confinement transition in compact U(1) lattice gauge field theory could be described by scalar QED obtained by soft breaking of the N=2 Seiberg-Witten model down to N=0 in the strong coupling region where monopoles are light. In two previous works this idea was presented at a qualitative level. In this work we analyze in detail the conjecture and obtain encouraging quantitative agreement with the numerical determination of the monopole mass and the dual photon mass in the vicinity of the Coulomb to confining phase transition.Comment: 14 pag, 5 figure

Dynamics of the entanglement spectrum in spin chains

We study the dynamics of the entanglement spectrum, that is the time evolution of the eigenvalues of the reduced density matrices after a bipartition of a one-dimensional spin chain. Starting from the ground state of an initial Hamiltonian, the state of the system is evolved in time with a new Hamiltonian. We consider both instantaneous and quasi adiabatic quenches of the system Hamiltonian across a quantum phase transition. We analyse the Ising model that can be exactly solved and the XXZ for which we employ the time-dependent density matrix renormalisation group algorithm. Our results show once more a connection between the Schmidt gap, i.e. the difference of the two largest eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix and order parameters, in this case the spontaneous magnetisation.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, comments are welcome! Version published in JSTAT special issue on "Quantum Entanglement In Condensed Matter Physics

Long-range Heisenberg models in quasi-periodically driven crystals of trapped ions

We introduce a theoretical scheme for the analog quantum simulation of long-range XYZ models using current trapped-ion technology. In order to achieve fully-tunable Heisenberg-type interactions, our proposal requires a state-dependent dipole force along a single vibrational axis, together with a combination of standard resonant and detuned carrier drivings. We discuss how this quantum simulator could explore the effect of long-range interactions on the phase diagram by combining an adiabatic protocol with the quasi-periodic drivings and test the validity of our scheme numerically. At the isotropic Heisenberg point, we show that the long-range Hamiltonian can be mapped onto a non-linear sigma model with a topological term that is responsible for its low-energy properties, and we benchmark our predictions with Matrix-Product-State numerical simulations.Comment: closer to published versio

Suppression of Kondo-assisted co-tunneling in a spin-1 quantum dot with Spin-Orbit interaction

Kondo-type zero-bias anomalies have been frequently observed in quantum dots occupied by two electrons and attributed to a spin-triplet configuration that may become stable under particular circumstances. Conversely, zero-bias anomalies have been so far quite elusive when quantum dots are occupied by an even number of electrons greater than two, even though a spin-triplet configuration is more likely to be stabilized there than for two electrons. We propose as an origin of this phenomenon the spin-orbit interaction, and we show how it profoundly alters the conventional Kondo screening scenario in the simple case of a laterally confined quantum dot with four electrons.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted 05May201

Simulation of two-dimensional quantum systems using a tree tensor network that exploits the entropic area law

This work explores the use of a tree tensor network ansatz to simulate the ground state of a local Hamiltonian on a two-dimensional lattice. By exploiting the entropic area law, the tree tensor network ansatz seems to produce quasi-exact results in systems with sizes well beyond the reach of exact diagonalisation techniques. We describe an algorithm to approximate the ground state of a local Hamiltonian on a L times L lattice with the topology of a torus. Accurate results are obtained for L={4,6,8}, whereas approximate results are obtained for larger lattices. As an application of the approach, we analyse the scaling of the ground state entanglement entropy at the quantum critical point of the model. We confirm the presence of a positive additive constant to the area law for half a torus. We also find a logarithmic additive correction to the entropic area law for a square block. The single copy entanglement for half a torus reveals similar corrections to the area law with a further term proportional to 1/L.Comment: Major rewrite, new version published in Phys. Rev. B with highly improved numerical results for the scaling of the entropies and several new sections. The manuscript has now 19 pages and 30 Figure

Entanglement renormalization and gauge symmetry

A lattice gauge theory is described by a redundantly large vector space that is subject to local constraints, and can be regarded as the low energy limit of an extended lattice model with a local symmetry. We propose a numerical coarse-graining scheme to produce low energy, effective descriptions of lattice models with a local symmetry, such that the local symmetry is exactly preserved during coarse-graining. Our approach results in a variational ansatz for the ground state(s) and low energy excitations of such models and, by extension, of lattice gauge theories. This ansatz incorporates the local symmetry in its structure, and exploits it to obtain a significant reduction of computational costs. We test the approach in the context of the toric code with a magnetic field, equivalent to Z2 lattice gauge theory, for lattices with up to 16 x 16 sites (16^2 x 2 = 512 spins) on a torus. We reproduce the well-known ground state phase diagram of the model, consisting of a deconfined and spin polarized phases separated by a continuous quantum phase transition, and obtain accurate estimates of energy gaps, ground state fidelities, Wilson loops, and several other quantities.Comment: reviewed version as published in PRB; this version includes a new section about the accuracy of the results several corrections and added citation

Boundary quantum critical phenomena with entanglement renormalization

We extend the formalism of entanglement renormalization to the study of boundary critical phenomena. The multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA), in its scale invariant version, offers a very compact approximation to quantum critical ground states. Here we show that, by adding a boundary to the scale invariant MERA, an accurate approximation to the critical ground state of an infinite chain with a boundary is obtained, from which one can extract boundary scaling operators and their scaling dimensions. Our construction, valid for arbitrary critical systems, produces an effective chain with explicit separation of energy scales that relates to Wilson's RG formulation of the Kondo problem. We test the approach by studying the quantum critical Ising model with free and fixed boundary conditions.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figures, for a related work see arXiv:0912.289

Dual superconductivity and vacuum properties in Yang--Mills theories

We address, within the dual superconductivity model for color confinement, the question whether the Yang-Mills vacuum behaves as a superconductor of type I or type II. In order to do that we compare, for the theory with gauge group SU(2), the determination of the field penetration depth $\lambda$ with that of the superconductor correlation length $\xi$. The latter is obtained by measuring the temporal correlator of a disorder parameter developed by the Pisa group to detect dual superconductivity. The comparison places the vacuum close to the border between type I and type II and marginally on the type II side. We also check our results against the study of directly measurable effects such as the interaction between two parallel flux tubes, obtaining consistent indications for a weak repulsive behaviour. Future strategies to improve our investigation are discussed.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures. Simulations on finer lattices and with different monopole charges added. Final version to be published in Nuclear Physics

Rashba-control for the spin excitation of a fully spin polarized vertical quantum dot

Far infrared radiation absorption of a quantum dot with few electrons in an orthogonal magnetic field could monitor the crossover to the fully spin polarized state. A Rashba spin-orbit coupling can tune the energy and the spin density of the first excited state which has a spin texture carrying one extra unit of angular momentum. The spin orbit coupling can squeeze a flipped spin density at the center of the dot and can increase the gap in the spectrum.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure