English

Slow quenches in a quantum Ising chain; dynamical phase transitions and topology

Statistical Mechanics 2016-06-08 v2

Abstract

We study the slow quenching dynamics (characterized by an inverse rate, τ1\tau^{-1}) of a one-dimensional transverse Ising chain with nearest neighbor ferromagentic interactions across the quantum critical point (QCP) and analyze the Loschmidt overlap {measured using the subsequent temporal evolution of the final wave function (reached at the end of the quenching) with the final time-independent Hamiltonian}. Studying the Fisher zeros of the corresponding generalized "partition function", we probe non-analyticities manifested in the rate function of the return probability known as dynamical phase transitions (DPTs). In contrast to the sudden quenching case, we show that DPTs survive {in the subsequent temporal evolution following the quenching across two critical points of the model for a sufficiently slow rate; furthermore, an interesting "lobe" structure of Fisher zeros emerge.} We have also made a connection to topological aspects studying the dynamical topological order parameter (νD(t)\nu_D(t)), as a function of time (tt) {measured from the instant when the quenching is complete. Remarkably, the time evolution of νD(t)\nu_D(t) exhibits drastically different behavior following quenches across a single QCP and two QCPs. } {In the former case, νD(t)\nu_D (t) increases step-wise by unity at every DPT (i.e., ΔνD=1\Delta \nu_D =1). In the latter case, on the other hand, νD(t)\nu_D(t) essentially oscillates between 0 and 1 (i.e., successive DPTs occur with ΔνD=1\Delta \nu_D =1 and ΔνD=1\Delta \nu_D =-1, respectively), except for instants where it shows a sudden jump by a factor of unity when two successive DPTs carry a topological charge of same sign.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1601.01637,
  title  = {Slow quenches in a quantum Ising chain; dynamical phase transitions and topology},
  author = {Shraddha Sharma and Uma Divakaran and Anatoli Polkovnikov and Amit Dutta},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.01637},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

10 pages, 8 figures