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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 289 records · Page 16
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Ergodicity breaking in rapidly rotating C 60 fullerenes

Ergodicity, the central tenet of statistical mechanics, requires an isolated system to explore all available phase space constrained by energy and symmetry. Mechanisms for violating ergodicity are of interest for probing nonequilibrium matter and protecting quantum coherence in complex systems. Polyatomic molecules have long served as a platform for probing ergodicity breaking in vibrational energy transport. Here, we report the observation of rotational ergodicity breaking in an unprecedentedly large molecule, 12 C 60 , determined from its icosahedral rovibrational fine structure. The ergodicity breaking occurs well below the vibrational ergodicity threshold and exhibits multiple transitions between ergodic and nonergodic regimes with increasing angular momentum. These peculiar dynamics result from the molecule’s distinctive combination of symmetry, size, and rigidity, highlighting its relevance to emergent phenomena in mesoscopic quantum systems.

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗
DOE OSTI2026

Stabilizing in-transition phases of superlattices through shape control of silver nanocrystals

In nanoscale assemblies, observations of structures in the transition pathways between high-symmetry lattices are rare because of the inherent instability of the intermediate phases. Here, we report that silver nanocrystals with shapes similar to truncated octahedra (mecons) self-assemble into superlattices that are stable and resemble a previously unobserved phase that bridges face-centered and body-centered cubic structures along the Nishiyama-Wassermann martensitic pathway. These superlattices exhibited high structural purity and stability and created a robust and tunable dissymmetric phase landscape. Notably, light-matter coupling emerged in these silver nanocrystal superlattices through plasmon-photon hybridization at the quantum level.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Microscopic diagnosis of universal geometric responses in fractional quantum Hall liquids

Topological quantum liquids contain internal degrees of freedom that are coupled to geometric response. Yet, an explicit and microscopic identification of the geometric response remains difficult. Here, taking notable fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states as typical examples, we systematically investigate a promising protocol—the Dehn-twist deformation on the torus geometry—to probe the geometric response of correlated topological states and establish the relation between such response and universal properties of pertinent states. Based on analytical derivations and numerical simulations, we find that the geometry-induced Berry phase encodes features for a broad class of FQH states at the Laughlin, hierarchy, Halperin and non-Abelian Moore-Read fillings. Our findings conclusively demonstrate that the adiabatic Dehn-twist deformation can faithfully capture rich geometric and topological information, including the Hall viscosity and topological spin of the pertinent FQH state and the chiral central charge of the underlying edge conformal field theory. Our approach provides a powerful way to reveal topological orders of generic FQH states and address previously open questions.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2024

Classical analog of quantum models in synthetic dimensions

We introduce a classical analog of quantum matter in ultracold molecule-synthetic or Rydberg atom-synthetic dimensions, by extending the Potts model to include interactions J 1 between atoms adjacent in both real and synthetic space and studying its finite-temperature properties. For intermediate values of J 1 , the resulting phases and phase diagrams are similar to those of the clock and Villain models, in which three phases emerge. There exists a sheet phase analogous to that found in quantum synthetic dimension models between the high-temperature disordered phase and the low-temperature ferromagnetic phase. Furthermore, we also employ machine learning to uncover nontrivial features of the phase diagram using the learning by confusion approach, which is able to discern several successive phase transitions.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2021

Exact Landau Level Description of Geometry and Interaction in a Flatband

Flatbands appear in many condensed matter systems, including the two-dimensional electron gas in a high magnetic field, correlated materials, and moiré heterostructures. They are characterized by intrinsic geometric properties such as the Berry curvature and Fubini-Study metric. The influence of the band geometry on electron-electron interaction is difficult to understand analytically because the geometry is in general nonuniform in momentum space. In this work, we study the topological flatband of Chern number C = 1 with a momentum-dependent but positive definite Berry curvature that fluctuates in sync with Fubini-Study metric. We derive an exact correspondence between such ideal flatbands and Landau levels and show that the band geometry fluctuation gives rise to a new type of interaction in the corresponding Landau levels that depends on the center of mass of two particles. We characterize such interactions by generalizing the usual Haldane pseudopotentials. This mapping gives exact zero-energy ground states for short-ranged repulsive generalized pseudopotentials in flatbands, in analogy to fractional quantum Hall systems. Driving the center-of-mass interactions beyond the repulsive regime leads to a dramatic reconstruction of the ground states towards gapless phases. The generalized pseudopotential could be a useful basis for future numerical studies.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2024

Disentangling the physics of the attractive Hubbard model as a fully interacting model of fermions via the accessible and symmetry-resolved entanglement entropies

The complicated ways in which electrons interact in many-body systems such as molecules and materials have long been viewed through the lens of local electron correlation and associated correlation functions. However, quantum information science has demonstrated that more global diagnostics of quantum states like the entanglement entropy can provide a complementary and clarifying lens on electronic behavior. One particularly useful measure that can be used to distinguish between quantum and classical sources of entanglement is the accessible entanglement, the entanglement available as a quantum resource for systems subject to conservation laws, such as fixed particle number, due to superselection rules. In this work, we introduce an algorithm and demonstrate how to compute accessible and symmetry-resolved entanglements for interacting fermion systems. This is accomplished by combining an incremental version of the swap algorithm with a recursive auxiliary field quantum Monte Carlo algorithm recently developed by the authors. We apply these tools to study the pairing and charge density waves exhibited in the paradigmatic attractive Hubbard model via entanglement. We find that the particle and spin symmetry-resolved entanglements and their related full probability distribution functions show very clear—and unique—signatures of the underlying electronic behavior even when those features are less pronounced in conventional correlation functions. Altogether, this work provides a systematic means of characterizing the entanglement within quantum systems that can grant a deeper understanding of the complicated electronic behavior that underlies quantum phase transitions and crossovers in many-body systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2022

Topological edge modes without symmetry in quasiperiodically driven spin chains

Here we construct an example of a 1d quasiperiodically driven spin chain whose edge states can coherently store quantum information, protected by a combination of localization, dynamics, and topology. In a sharp departure from topological phases in static and periodically driven (Floquet) spin chains, this model does not rely upon microscopic symmetry protection: Instead, the edge states are protected purely by emergent dynamical symmetries. We explore the dynamical signatures of this emergent dynamical symmetry-protected topological (EDSPT) order through exact numerics, time evolving block decimation, and analytic high-frequency expansion, finding evidence that the EDSPT is a stable dynamical phase protected by bulk many-body localization up to (at least) stretched-exponentially long timescales, and possibly beyond. We argue that EDSPTs are special to the quasiperiodically driven setting, and cannot arise in Floquet systems. Moreover, we find evidence of a type of boundary critical with no known static or Floquet analogue, in which the edge spin dynamics transition from quasiperiodic to chaotic, leading to bulk thermalization.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Breakdown of order fractionalization in the CPT model

Here, we present an analysis of the half-filled CPT model, an analytically tractable Kondo lattice model with Yao-Lee spin-spin interactions on a 3D hyperoctagon lattice, proposed by Coleman, Panigrahi, and Tsvelik. Previous studies have established that the CPT model exhibits odd-frequency triplet superconductivity and order fractionalization. Through asymptotic analyses in the small- and large- Kondo coupling limits, we identify a quantum critical point at , marking a transition from a superconductor to a Kondo insulator. By estimating the vison gap energy to account for thermal gauge fluctuations, we determine the energy scales governing the thermal breakdown of order fractionalization. Moreover, at large the Kondo insulator undergoes orbital decoupling, leading to the formation of a decoupled Kitaev orbital liquid. These findings and analogies with the -gauged model lead us to propose a tentative phase diagram for the CPT model at half-filling.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

Lightwave terahertz quantum manipulation of nonequilibrium superconductor phases and their collective modes

In this work, we present a gauge-invariant density matrix description of nonequilibrium superconductor (SC) states with spatial and temporal correlations driven by intense terahertz (THz) lightwaves. We derive superconductor Bloch-Maxwell equations of motion that extend Anderson pseudospin models to include the Cooper pair center-of-mass motion and electromagnetic propagation effects. We thus describe quantum control of dynamical phases, collective modes, quasiparticle coherence, and high nonlinearities during cycles of carrier wave oscillations, which relates to our recent experiments. Coherent photogeneration of a nonlinear supercurrent with a dc component, achieved via condensate acceleration by an effective lightwave field, dynamically breaks the equilibrium inversion symmetry. Experimental signatures include high harmonic light emission at equilibrium-symmetry-forbidden frequencies, Rabi-Higgs collective modes and quasiparticle coherence, and nonequilibrium moving condensate states tuned by few-cycle THz fields. We use such lightwaves as an oscillating accelerating force that drives strong nonlinearities and anisotropic quasiparticle populations to control and amplify different classes of collective modes, e.g., damped oscillations, persistent oscillations, and overdamped dynamics via Rabi flopping. Recent phase-coherent nonlinear spectroscopy experiments can be modeled by solving the full nonlinear quantum dynamics including self-consistent light-matter coupling.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2021

Bose-Luttinger liquids

In this report we study systems of bosons whose low-energy excitations are located along a spherical submanifold of momentum space. We argue for the existence of gapless phases which we dub “Bose-Luttinger liquids,” which in some respects can be regarded as bosonic versions of Fermi liquids, while in other respects they exhibit striking differences. These phases have bosonic analogues of Fermi surfaces, and like Fermi liquids they possess a large number of emergent conservation laws. Unlike Fermi liquids, however, these phases lack quasiparticles, possess different RG flows, and have correlation functions controlled by a continuously varying exponent η, which characterizes the anomalous dimension of the bosonic field. We show that when η > 1, these phases are stable with respect to all symmetric perturbations. These theories may be of relevance to several physical situations, including frustrated quantum magnets, rotons in superfluid He, and superconductors with finite-momentum pairing. As a concrete application, we show that coupling a Bose-Luttinger liquid to a conventional Fermi liquid produces a resistivity scaling with temperature as T η . We argue that this may provide an explanation for the non-Fermi liquid resistivity observed in the paramagnetic phase of MnSi.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Spontaneous breaking of multipole symmetries

Multipole symmetries are of interest both as a window on fracton physics and as a crucial ingredient in realizing new universality classes for quantum dynamics. Here we address the question of whether and when multipole symmetries can be spontaneously broken, both in thermal equilibrium and at zero temperature. In this work, we derive generalized Mermin-Wagner arguments for the total or partial breaking of multipolar symmetry groups and generalized Imry-Ma arguments for the robustness of such multipolar symmetry breaking to disorder. We present both general results and explicit examples. Our results should be directly applicable to quantum dynamics with multipolar symmetries and also provide a useful stepping stone to understanding the robustness of fracton phases to thermal fluctuations, quantum fluctuations, and disorder.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2022

Avalanches and many-body resonances in many-body localized systems

Here we numerically study both the avalanche instability and many-body resonances in strongly disordered spin chains exhibiting many-body localization (MBL). Finite-size systems behave like MBL within the MBL regimes, which we divide into the asymptotic MBL phase and the finite-size MBL regime; the latter regime is, however, thermal in the limit of large systems and long times. In both Floquet and Hamiltonian models, we identify some landmarks within the MBL regimes. Our first landmark is an estimate of where the MBL phase becomes unstable to avalanches, obtained by measuring the slowest relaxation rate of a finite chain coupled to an infinite bath at one end. Our estimates indicate that the actual MBL-to-thermal phase transition occurs much deeper in the MBL regimes than has been suggested by most previous studies. Our other landmarks involve systemwide many-body resonances: We find that the effective matrix elements producing eigenstates with systemwide many-body resonances are enormously broadly distributed. This broad distribution means that the onset of such resonances in typical samples occurs quite deep in the MBL regimes, and the first such resonances typically involve rare pairs of eigenstates that are farther apart in energy than the minimum gap. Thus we find that the resonance properties define two landmarks that divide the MBL regimes of finite-size systems into three subregimes: (i) at strongest randomness, typical samples do not have any eigenstates that are involved in systemwide many-body resonances; (ii) there is a substantial intermediate subregime where typical samples do have such resonances but the pair of eigenstates with the minimum spectral gap does not, so the size of the minimum gap agrees with expectations from Poisson statistics; and (iii) in the weaker randomness subregime, the minimum gap is larger than predicted by Poisson level statistics because it is involved in a many-body resonance and thus subject to level repulsion. Nevertheless, even in this third subregime, all but a vanishing fraction of eigenstates remain nonresonant and the system thus still appears MBL in most respects. Based on our estimates of the location of the avalanche instability, it might be that the MBL phase is only part of subregime (i) and the other subregimes are entirely in the thermal phase, even though they look localized in most respects, so are in the finite-size MBL regime.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Algebraic Hastatic Order in One-Dimensional Two-Channel Kondo Lattice

The two-channel Kondo lattice likely hosts a rich array of phases, including hastatic order, a channel symmetry breaking heavy Fermi liquid. In this work, we revisit its one-dimensional phase diagram using density matrix renormalization group and, in contrast to previous work, find algebraic hastatic orders generically for stronger couplings. These are heavy Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids with nonanalyticities at Fermi vectors captured by hastatic density waves. We also find a predicted additional nonlocal order parameter due to interference between hastatic spinors, not present at large N, and residual repulsive interactions at strong coupling suggesting non-Fermi-liquid physics in higher dimensions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Detecting Quantum Critical Points of Correlated Systems by Quantum Convolutional Neural Network Using Data from Variational Quantum Eigensolver

Machine learning has been applied to a wide variety of models, from classical statistical mechanics to quantum strongly correlated systems, for classifying phase transitions. The recently proposed quantum convolutional neural network (QCNN) provides a new framework for using quantum circuits instead of classical neural networks as the backbone of classification methods. We present the results from training the QCNN by the wavefunctions of the variational quantum eigensolver for the one-dimensional transverse field Ising model (TFIM). We demonstrate that the QCNN identifies wavefunctions corresponding to the paramagnetic and ferromagnetic phases of the TFIM with reasonable accuracy. The QCNN can be trained to predict the corresponding ‘phase’ of wavefunctions around the putative quantum critical point even though it is trained by wavefunctions far away. The paper provides a basis for exploiting the QCNN to identify the quantum critical point.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Global quantum phase diagram and non-Abelian chiral spin liquid in a spin- 3 2 square-lattice antiferromagnet

Since strong quantum fluctuations are essential for the emergence of quantum spin liquids, there have been extensive exploration and identification of spin liquid candidates in spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ systems, while such activities are rare in higher spin systems. Here we report an example of non-Abelian chiral spin liquid emerging in a spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ Heisenberg model on a square lattice. By tuning Heisenberg exchange interaction and scalar chirality interaction, we map out a quantum phase diagram enclosing three conventional magnetic orders and a chiral spin liquid based on density-matrix renormalization group studies. The nature of the spin liquid is identified as a long-sought bosonic version of the Read-Rezayi state that supports non-Abelian Fibonacci anyonic statistics, identified by the ground state entanglement spectrum. Significantly, we establish that the non-Abelian chiral spin liquid emerges through the enlarged local degrees of freedom and enhanced quantum fluctuations near the classical phase boundaries of competing magnetic orders. Finally, our numerical discovery of an exotic quantum spin liquid in a spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ system suggests a route for discovering fractionalized quantum phases in frustrated higher spin magnetic compounds.

2-dimensional systems↗
DOE OSTI2022

Phase diagram of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger-Hubbard model on a square lattice

The Hubbard and Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) Hamiltonians are iconic models for understanding the qualitative effects of electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions, respectively. In the two-dimensional square lattice Hubbard model at half filling, the on-site Coulomb repulsion U between up and down electrons induces antiferromagnetic (AFM) order and a Mott insulating phase. On the other hand, for the SSH model, there is an AFM phase when the electron-phonon coupling λ is less than a critical value λ c and a bond order wave when λ > λ c . In this Letter, we perform numerical studies on the square lattice optical Su-Schrieffer-Heeger-Hubbard Hamiltonian, which combines both interactions. We use the determinant quantum Monte Carlo method which does not suffer from the fermionic sign problem at half filling. We map out the phase diagram and find that it exhibits a direct first-order transition between an antiferromagnetic phase and a bond-ordered wave as λ increases. Here, the AFM phase is characterized by two different regions. At smaller λ the behavior is similar to that of the pure Hubbard model; the other region, while maintaining long-range AFM order, exhibits larger kinetic energies and double occupancy, i.e., larger quantum fluctuations, similar to the AFM phase found in the pure SSH model.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2021

Z 2 topological order and first-order quantum phase transitions in systems with combinatorial gauge symmetry

We study a generalization of the two-dimensional transverse-field Ising model, combining both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic two-body interactions, that hosts exact global and local Z 2 gauge symmetries. Using exact diagonalization and stochastic series expansion quantum Monte Carlo methods, we confirm the existence of the topological phase in line with previous theoretical predictions. Our simulation results show that the transition between the confined topological phase and the deconfined paramagnetic phase is of first order, in contrast to the conventional Z 2 lattice gauge model in which the transition maps onto that of the standard Ising model and is continuous. We further generalize the model by replacing the transverse field on the gauge spins with a ferromagnetic X X interaction while keeping the local gauge symmetry intact. We find that the Z 2 topological phase remains stable, while the paramagnetic phase is replaced by a ferromagnetic phase. The topological-ferromagnetic quantum phase transition is also of first order. For both models, we discuss the low-energy spinon and vison excitations of the topological phase and their avoided level crossings associated with the first-order quantum phase transitions.

2-dimensional systems↗