Armin Rahmani

Emergent Supersymmetry from Strongly Interacting Majorana Zero Modes.

We show that a strongly interacting chain of Majorana zero modes exhibits a supersymmetric quantum critical point corresponding to the c=7/10 tricritical Ising model, which separates a critical phase in the Ising universality class from a supersymmetric massive phase. We verify our predictions with numerical density-matrix-renormalization-group computations and determine the consequences for tunneling experiments.

Optimal Control for Unitary Preparation of Many-Body States: Application to Luttinger Liquids

Many-body ground states can be prepared via unitary evolution in cold atomic systems. Given the initial state and a fixed time for the evolution, how close can we get to a desired ground state if we can tune the Hamiltonian in time? Here we study this optimal control problem focusing on Luttinger liquids with tunable interactions. We show that the optimal protocol can be obtained by simulated annealing. We find that the optimal interaction strength of the Luttinger liquid can have a nonmonotonic time dependence. Moreover, the system exhibits a marked transition when the ratio τ/L of the preparation time to the system size exceeds a critical value. In this regime, the optimal protocols can prepare the states with almost perfect accuracy. The optimal protocols are robust against dynamical noise.

Optimizing Variational Quantum Algorithms Using Pontryagin’s Minimum Principle

We use Pontryagins minimum principle to optimize variational quantum algorithms. We show that for a fixed computation time, the optimal evolution has a bang-bang (square pulse) form, both for closed and open quantum systems with Markovian decoherence. Our findings support the choice of evolution ansatz in the recently proposed Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm. Focusing on the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin-glass as an example, we find a system-size independent distribution of the duration of pulses, with characteristic time scale set by the inverse of the coupling constants in the Hamiltonian. The optimality of the bang-bang protocols and the characteristic time scale of the pulses provide an efficient parameterization of the protocol and inform the search for effective hybrid (classical and quantum) schemes for tackling combinatorial optimization problems. For the particular systems we study, we find numerically that the optimal nonadiabatic bang-bang protocols outperform conventional quantum annealing in the presence of weak white additive external noise and weak coupling to a thermal bath modeled with the Redfield master equation.

Phase diagram of the interacting Majorana chain model

The Hubbard and spinless fermion chains are paradigms of strongly correlated systems, very well understood using the Bethe ansatz, density matrix renormalization group (DMRG), and field theory/renormalization group (RG) methods. They have been applied to one-dimensional materials and have provided important insights for understanding higher-dimensional cases. Recently, an interacting fermion model has been introduced, with possible applications to topological materials. It has a single Majorana fermion operator on each lattice site and interactions with the shortest possible range that involve four sites. We present a thorough analysis of the phase diagram of this model in one dimension using field-theory/RG and DMRG methods. It includes a gapped supersymmetric region and a gapless phase with coexisting Luttinger liquid and Ising degrees of freedom. In addition to a first-order transition, three critical points occur: tricritical Ising, Lifshitz, and a generalization of the commensurate-incommensurate transition. We also survey various gapped phases of the system that arise when the translation symmetry is broken by dimerization and find both trivial and topological phases with 0, 1, and 2 Majorana zero modes bound to the edges of the chain with open boundary conditions.

General method for calculating the universal conductance of strongly correlated junctions of multiple quantum wires

We develop a method to extract the universal conductance of junctions of multiple quantum wires, a property of systems connected to reservoirs, from static ground-state computations in closed finite systems. The method is based on a key relationship, derived within the framework of boundary conformal field theory, between the conductance tensor and certain ground state correlation functions. Our results provide a systematic way of studying quantum transport in the presence of strong electron-electron interactions using efficient numerical techniques such as the standard time-independent density-matrix renormalization-group method. We give a step-by-step recipe for applying the method and present several tests and benchmarks. As an application of the method, we calculate the conductance of the M fixed point of a Y junction of Luttinger liquids for several values of the Luttinger parameter

Junctions of multiple quantum wires with different Luttinger parameters

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Quantum Hall ice

and conjecture its functional dependence on

Exact results on the quench dynamics of the entanglement entropy in the toric code

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Majorana-Hubbard model on the square lattice

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Optimal diabatic dynamics of Majorana-based quantum gates

Within the framework of boundary conformal field theory, we evaluate the conductance of stable fixed points of junctions of two and three quantum wires with different Luttinger parameters. For two wires, the physical properties are governed by a single effective Luttinger parameter for each of the charge and spin sectors. We present numerical density-matrix-renormalization-group calculations of the conductance of a junction of two chains of interacting spinless fermions with different interaction strengths, obtained using a recently developed method [ Phys. Rev. Lett. 105 226803 (2010)]. The numerical results show very good agreement with the analytical predictions. For three spinless wires (i.e., a Y junction) we analytically determine the full phase diagram and compute all fixed-point conductances as a function of the three Luttinger parameters.