Group Seminar via Zoom: Heating and blackhole dynamics in critical Floquet systems

Prof. Titus Neupert, University of Zurich
Group meeting via video conference (Zoom)
Tuesday, January 12th, 09:00 (MEZ)

Dealing with the unique situation of partial lock downs worldwide and home office solutions at our Institute due to the current spreading of the Covid 19 virus, we are now holding our group seminars and journal clubs via video conference. This procedure enables us to continue our research, enhance discussions and exchange important information.

Abstract:

While driven interacting quantum matter is generically subject to heating and scrambling, certain classes of systems evade this paradigm. I will discuss such an exceptional class in periodically driven critical (1 + 1)-dimensional systems with a spatially modulated, but disorder-free time evolution operator. Instead of complete scrambling, the excitations of the system remain well-defined. Their propagation is analogous to the evolution along light cones in a curved space-time defined by Schwarzschild black holes. The Hawking temperature serves as an order parameter which distinguishes between heating and non-heating phases. Beyond a time scale determined by the inverse Hawking temperature, excitations are absorbed by the black holes resulting in a singular concentration of energy at their center. I will discuss how these results can be obtained analytically within conformal field theory and complementary by means of numerical calculations for an interacting XXZ spin-1/2 chain. Finally, I will show that much of this phenomenology survives when the driving is quasiperiodic instead of periodic, thus proving to be surprisingly robust.

In the afternoon there will be a discussion at 16:00 (4:00pm) with Titus to see if an implementation of his ideas is possible at one of our experiments.

If you would like to join our group seminars via Zoom, please contact us for more information.