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Prem, Abhinav

Publications and source records attributed to Prem, Abhinav.

11 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Quantum fragmentation in the extended quantum breakdown model

We introduce a one-dimensional (1D) extended quantum breakdown model comprising a fermionic and a spin degree of freedom per site, and featuring a spatially asymmetric breakdown-type interaction between the fermions and spins. Furthermore, our model resembles the breakdown process of particles incident into a cloud chamber with nonzero quantum amplitudes of both exciting and not exciting the local vapor atoms. We analytically show that, in the absence of any magnetic field for the spins, the model exhibits Hilbert space fragmentation within each symmetry sector into exponentially many Krylov subspaces and hence displays nonthermal dynamics. Here, we demonstrate that the fragmentation naturally occurs in an entangled basis and thus provides an example of “quantum fragmentation.” Besides establishing the nature of fragmentation analytically, we also study the long-time behavior of the entanglement entropy and its deviation from the expected Page value as a probe of ergodicity in the system. Upon introducing a magnetic field for the spins, most of the Krylov subspaces merge and the model becomes chaotic. Finally, we study the effects of strong randomness on the system and observe behavior similar to that of many-body localized systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2024

Filling constraints on translation invariant dipole conserving systems

Systems with conserved dipole moment have drawn considerable interest in light of their realization in recent experiments on tilted optical lattices. Here, an important question for such systems is delineating the conditions under which they admit a unique gapped ground state that is consistent with all symmetries. Here, we study one-dimensional translation-invariant lattices that conserve U(1) charge and Z L dipole moment, where discreteness of the dipole symmetry is enforced by periodic boundary conditions, with L the system size. We show that in these systems, a symmetric, gapped, and non-degenerate ground state requires not only integer charge filling, but also a fixed value of the dipole filling, while other fractional dipole fillings enforce either a gapless or symmetry-breaking ground state. In contrast with prior results in the literature, we find that the dipole filling constraint depends both on the charge filling as well as the system size, emphasizing the subtle interplay of dipole symmetry with boundary conditions. We support our results with numerical simulations and exact results.

1-dimensional systems↗
DOE OSTI2023

Rotational symmetry protected edge and corner states in Abelian topological phases

Spatial symmetries can enrich the topological classification of interacting quantum matter and endow systems with non-trivial strong topological invariants (protected by internal symmetries) with additional "weak" topological indices. In this paper, we study the edge physics of systems with a non-trivial shift invariant, which is protected by either a continuous $\text{U}(1)_r$ or discrete $\text{C}_n$ rotation symmetry, along with internal $\text{U}(1)_c$ charge conservation. Specifically, we construct an interface between two systems which have the same Chern number but are distinguished by their Wen-Zee shift and, through analytic arguments supported by numerics, show that the interface hosts counter-propagating gapless edge modes which cannot be gapped by arbitrary local symmetry-preserving perturbations. Using the Chern-Simons field theory description of two-dimensional Abelian topological orders, we then prove sufficient conditions for continuous rotation symmetry protected gapless edge states using two complementary approaches. One relies on the algebraic Lagrangian sub-algebra framework for gapped boundaries while the other uses a more physical flux insertion argument. For the case of discrete rotation symmetries, we extend the field theory approach to show the presence of fractional corner charges for Abelian topological orders with gappable edges, and compute them in the case where the Abelian topological order is placed on the two-dimensional surface of a Platonic solid. Finally, our work paves the way for studying the edge physics associated with spatial symmetries in symmetry enriched topological phases.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Dynamics and transport in the boundary-driven dissipative Klein-Gordon chain

Motivated by experiments on chains of superconducting qubits, we consider the dynamics of a classical Klein-Gordon chain coupled to coherent driving and subject to dissipation solely at its boundaries. As the strength of the boundary driving is increased, this minimal classical model recovers the main features of the "dissipative phase transition" seen experimentally. Between the transmitting and non-transmitting regimes on either side of this transition (which support ballistic and diffusive energy transport respectively), we observe additional dynamical regimes of interest. These include a regime of superdiffusive energy transport at weaker driving strengths, together with a "dissipative breather crystal" regime at stronger driving strengths, which is characterized by emergent translation symmetry, ballistic energy transport, and coherent oscillations of a nonlinear normal mode. Here, we propose a non-local Lyapunov exponent as an experimentally measurable diagnostic of many-body chaos in this system, and more generally in open systems that are only coupled to an environment at their boundaries.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Symmetric tensor gauge theories on curved spaces

Fractons and other subdimensional particles are an exotic class of emergent quasi-particle excitations with severely restricted mobility. A wide class of models featuring these quasi-particles have a natural description in the language of symmetric tensor gauge theories, which feature conservation laws restricting the motion of particles to lower-dimensional sub-spaces, such as lines or points. In this work, we investigate the fate of symmetric tensor gauge theories in the presence of spatial curvature. We find that weak curvature can induce small (exponentially suppressed) violations on the mobility restrictions of charges, leaving a sense of asymptotic fractonic/sub-dimensional behaviour on generic manifolds. Nevertheless, we show that certain symmetric tensor gauge theories maintain sharp mobility restrictions and gauge invariance on certain special curved spaces, such as Einstein manifolds or spaces of constant curvature.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2019

Topological states on fractal lattices

Here, we investigate the fate of topological states on fractal lattices. Focusing on a spinless chiral p-wave paired superconductor, we find that this model supports two qualitatively distinct phases when defined on a Sierpinski gasket.While the trivial phase is characterized by a self-similar spectrum with infinitely many gaps and extended eigenstates, the “topological” phase has a gapless spectrum and hosts chiral states propagating along edges of the graph. Besides employing theoretical probes such as the real-space Chern number, inverse participation ratio, and energy-level statistics in the presence of disorder, we develop a simple physical picture capturing the essential features of the model on the gasket. Extending this picture to other fractal lattices and topological states, we show that the p + ip state admits a gapped topological phase on the Sierpinski carpet and that a higher-order topological insulator placed on this lattice hosts gapless modes localized on corners.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Entanglement spectra of stabilizer codes: A window into gapped quantum phases of matter

The entanglement spectrum (ES) provides a barometer of quantum entanglement and encodes physical information beyond that contained in the entanglement entropy. In this paper, we explore the ES of stabilizer codes, which furnish exactly solvable models for a plethora of gapped quantum phases of matter. Studying the ES for stabilizer Hamiltonians in the presence of arbitrary weak local perturbations thus allows us to develop a general framework within which the entanglement features of gapped topological phases can be computed and contrasted. In particular, we study models harboring fracton order, both type-I and type-II, and compare the resulting ES with that of both conventional topological order and of (strong) subsystem symmetry protected topological (SSPT) states. We find that nonlocal surface stabilizers (NLSS), a set of symmetries of the Hamiltonian which form on the boundary of the entanglement cut, act as purveyors of universal nonlocal features appearing in the entanglement spectrum. While in conventional topological orders and fracton orders, the NLSS retain a form of topological invariance with respect to the entanglement cut, subsystem symmetric systems—fracton and SSPT phases—additionally show a nontrivial geometric dependence on the entanglement cut, corresponding to the subsystem symmetry. This sheds further light on the interplay between geometric and topological effects in fracton phases of matter and demonstrates that strong SSPT phases harbour a measure of quasilocal entanglement beyond that encountered in conventional SPT phases. Here, we further show that a version of the edge-entanglement correspondence, established earlier for gapped two-dimensional topological phases, also holds for gapped three-dimensional fracton models.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Cage-Net Fracton Models

We introduce a class of gapped three-dimensional models, dubbed “cage-net fracton models,” which host immobile fracton excitations in addition to non-Abelian particles with restricted mobility. Starting from layers of two-dimensional string-net models, whose spectrum includes non-Abelian anyons, we condense extended one-dimensional “flux strings” built out of pointlike excitations. Flux-string condensation generalizes the concept of anyon condensation familiar from conventional topological order and allows us to establish properties of the fracton-ordered (equivalently, flux-string-condensed) phase, such as its ground-state wave function and spectrum of excitations. Through the examples of doubled-Ising and SU ( 2 ) k cage-net models, we demonstrate the existence of strictly immobile Abelian fractons and of non-Abelian particles restricted to move only along one dimension. In the doubled-Ising cage-net model, we show that these restricted-mobility non-Abelian excitations are a fundamentally three-dimensional phenomenon, as they cannot be understood as bound states among two-dimensional non-Abelian anyons and Abelian particles. We further show that the ground-state wave function of such phases can be understood as a fluctuating network of extended objects—cages—and strings, which we dub a cage-net condensate. Besides having implications for topological quantum computation in three dimensions, our work may also point the way towards more general insights into quantum phases of matter with fracton order.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Twisted fracton models in three dimensions

We study novel three-dimensional gapped quantum phases of matter which support quasiparticles with restricted mobility, including immobile “fracton” excitations. So far, most existing fracton models may be instructively viewed as generalized Abelian lattice gauge theories. Here, by analogy with Dijkgraaf-Witten topological gauge theories, we discover a natural generalization of fracton models, obtained by twisting the gauge symmetries. Introducing generalized gauge transformation operators carrying an extra phase factor depending on local configurations, we construct a plethora of exactly solvable three-dimensional models, which we dub “twisted fracton models.” A key result of our approach is to demonstrate the existence of rich non-Abelian fracton phases of distinct varieties in a three-dimensional system with finite-range interactions. For an accurate characterization of these novel phases, the notion of being inextricably non-Abelian is introduced for fractons and quasiparticles with one-dimensional mobility, referring to their new behavior of displaying braiding statistics that is, and remains, non-Abelian regardless of which quasiparticles with higher mobility are added to or removed from them. We also analyze these models by embedding them on a 3-torus and computing their ground-state degeneracies, which exhibit a surprising and novel dependence on the system size in the non-Abelian fracton phases. Furthermore, as an important advance in the study of fracton order, we develop a general mathematical framework which systematically captures the fusion and braiding properties of fractons and other quasiparticles with restricted mobility.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2018

Pinch point singularities of tensor spin liquids

Recently, a new class of three-dimensional spin liquid models have been theoretically discovered, which feature generalized Coulomb phases of emergent symmetric tensor U(1) gauge theories. These “higher rank” tensor models are particularly intriguing due to the presence of quasiparticles with restricted mobility, such as fractons. We investigate universal experimental signatures of tensor Coulomb phases. Most notably, we show that tensor Coulomb spin liquids (both quantum and classical) feature characteristic pinch point singularities in their spin-spin correlation functions, accessible via neutron scattering, which can be readily distinguished from pinch points in conventional U(1) spin liquids. These pinch points can thus serve as a crisp experimental diagnostic for such phases. Here, we also tabulate the low-temperature heat capacity of various tensor Coulomb phases, which serves as a useful additional diagnostic in certain cases.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗