Identifying Quantum Many-Body Integrability and Chaos Using Eigenstate Trace Distances.

While the concepts of quantum many-body integrability and chaos are of fundamental importance for the understanding of quantum matter, their precise definition has so far remained an open question. In this Letter, we introduce an alternative indicator for quantum many-body integrability and chaos, which is based on the statistics of eigenstates by means of nearest-neighbor subsystem trace distances. We show that this provides us with a faithful classification through extensive numerical simulations for a large variety of paradigmatic model systems including random matrix theories, free fermions, Bethe-ansatz solvable systems, and models of many-body localization. While existing indicators, such as those obtained from level-spacing statistics, have already been utilized with great success, they also face limitations. This concerns, for instance, the quantum many-body kicked top, which is exactly solvable but classified as chaotic in certain regimes based on the level-spacing statistics, while our introduced indicator signals the expected quantum many-body integrability. We discuss the universal behaviors we observe for the nearest-neighbor trace distances and point out that our indicator might be useful also in other contexts such as for the many-body localization transition.

Statistical physics of principal minors: Cavity approach.

Determinants are useful to represent the state of an interacting system of (effectively) repulsive and independent elements, like fermions in a quantum system and training samples in a learning problem. A computationally challenging problem is to compute the sum of powers of principal minors of a matrix which is relevant to the study of critical behaviors in quantum fermionic systems and finding a subset of maximally informative training data for a learning algorithm. Specifically, principal minors of positive square matrices can be considered as statistical weights of a random point process on the set of the matrix indices. The probability of each subset of the indices is in general proportional to a positive power of the determinant of the associated submatrix. We use Gaussian representation of the determinants for symmetric and positive matrices to estimate the partition function (or free energy) and the entropy of principal minors within the Bethe approximation. The results are expected to be asymptotically exact for diagonally dominant matrices with locally treelike structures. We consider the Laplacian matrix of random regular graphs of degree K=2,3,4 and exactly characterize the structure of the relevant minors in a mean-field model of such matrices. No (finite-temperature) phase transition is observed in this class of diagonally dominant matrices by increasing the positive power of the principal minors, which here plays the role of an inverse temperature.

Universal behavior of the Shannon mutual information of critical quantum chains.

We consider the Shannon mutual information of subsystems of critical quantum chains in their ground states. Our results indicate a universal leading behavior for large subsystem sizes. Moreover, as happens with the entanglement entropy, its finite-size behavior yields the conformal anomaly c of the underlying conformal field theory governing the long-distance physics of the quantum chain. We study analytically a chain of coupled harmonic oscillators and numerically the Q-state Potts models (Q=2, 3, and 4), the XXZ quantum chain, and the spin-1 Fateev-Zamolodchikov model. The Shannon mutual information is a quantity easily computed, and our results indicate that for relatively small lattice sizes, its finite-size behavior already detects the universality class of quantum critical behavior.

Exact full counting statistics for the staggered magnetization and the domain walls in the XY spin chain.

We calculate exactly cumulant generating functions (full counting statistics) for the transverse, staggered magnetization, and the domain walls at zero temperature for a finite interval of the XY spin chain. In particular, we also derive a universal interpolation formula in the scaling limit for the full counting statistics of the transverse magnetization and the domain walls which is based on the solution of a Painlevé V equation. By further determining subleading corrections in a large interval asymptotics, we are able to test the applicability of conformal field theory predictions at criticality. As a by-product, we also obtain exact results for the probability of formation of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic domains in both the σ^{z} and σ^{x} basis in the ground state. The analysis hinges upon asymptotic expansions of block Toeplitz determinants, for which we formulate and check numerically a different conjecture.

Scaling relations for contour lines of rough surfaces.

Equilibrium and nonequilibrium growth phenomena, e.g., surface growth, generically yields self-affine distributions. Analysis of statistical properties of these distributions appears essential in understanding statistical mechanics of underlying phenomena. Here, we analyze scaling properties of the cumulative distribution of iso-height loops (i.e., contour lines) of rough self-affine surfaces in terms of loop area and system size. Inspired by the Coulomb gas methods, we find the generating function of the area of the loops. Interestingly, we find that, after sorting loops with respect to their perimeters, Zipf-like scaling relations hold for ranked loops. Numerical simulations are also provided in order to demonstrate the proposed scaling relations.

Geometrical exponents of contour loops on synthetic multifractal rough surfaces: multiplicative hierarchical cascade p model.

In this paper, we study many geometrical properties of contour loops to characterize the morphology of synthetic multifractal rough surfaces, which are generated by multiplicative hierarchical cascading processes. To this end, two different classes of multifractal rough surfaces are numerically simulated. As the first group, singular measure multifractal rough surfaces are generated by using the p model. The smoothened multifractal rough surface then is simulated by convolving the first group with a so-called Hurst exponent, H*. The generalized multifractal dimension of isoheight lines (contours), D(q), correlation exponent of contours, x(l), cumulative distributions of areas, ξ, and perimeters, η, are calculated for both synthetic multifractal rough surfaces. Our results show that for both mentioned classes, hyperscaling relations for contour loops are the same as that of monofractal systems. In contrast to singular measure multifractal rough surfaces, H* plays a leading role in smoothened multifractal rough surfaces. All computed geometrical exponents for the first class depend not only on its Hurst exponent but also on the set of p values. But in spite of multifractal nature of smoothened surfaces (second class), the corresponding geometrical exponents are controlled by H*, the same as what happens for monofractal rough surfaces.

Contour lines of the discrete scale-invariant rough surfaces.

We study the fractal properties of the two-dimensional (2D) discrete scale-invariant (DSI) rough surfaces. The contour lines of these rough surfaces show clear DSI. In the appropriate limit the DSI surfaces converge to the scale-invariant rough surfaces. The fractal properties of the 2D DSI rough surfaces apart from possessing the discrete scale-invariance property follow the properties of the contour lines of the corresponding scale-invariant rough surfaces. We check this hypothesis by calculating numerous fractal exponents of the contour lines by using numerical calculations. Apart from calculating the known scaling exponents, some other new fractal exponents are also calculated.

First-passage-time processes and subordinated Schramm-Loewner evolution.

We study the first-passage-time processes of the anomalous diffusion on the self-similar curves in two dimensions. The scaling properties of the mean-square displacement and mean first passage time of the fractional Brownian motion and subordinated walk on the different fractal curves (loop-erased random walk, harmonic explorer, and percolation front) are derived. We also define natural parametrized subordinated Schramm-Loewner evolution (NS-SLE) as a mathematical tool that can model diffusion on fractal curves. The scaling properties of the mean-square displacement and mean first passage time for NS-SLE are obtained by numerical means.

Discrete scale invariance and stochastic Loewner evolution.

In complex systems with fractal properties the scale invariance has an important rule to classify different statistical properties. In two dimensions the Loewner equation can classify all the fractal curves. Using the Weierstrass-Mandelbrot (WM) function as the drift of the Loewner equation we introduce a large class of fractal curves with discrete scale invariance (DSI). We show that the fractal dimension of the curves can be extracted from the diffusion coefficient of the trend of the variance of the WM function. We argue that, up to the fractal dimension calculations, all the WM functions follow the behavior of the corresponding brownian motion. Our study opens a way to classify all the fractal curves with DSI. In particular, we investigate the contour lines of two-dimensional WM function as a physical candidate for our new stochastic curves.

Conformal curves on the WO3 surface.

We have studied the isoheight lines on the WO3 surface as a physical candidate for conformally invariant curves. We have shown that these lines are conformally invariant with the same statistics of domain walls in the critical Ising model. They belong to the family of conformal invariant curves called Schramm-Loewner evolution (or SLE(kappa)), with diffusivity of kappa approximately 3. This can be regarded as the first experimental observation of SLE curves. We have also argued that Ballistic Deposition (BD) can serve as a growth model giving rise to contours with similar statistics at large scales.