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Interacting symmetry-protected topological phases out of equilibrium

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

McGinley, Maximilian  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3122-2207
Cooper, NR 

Abstract

The topological features of quantum many-body wave functions are known to have profound consequences for the physics of ground-states and their low-energy excitations. We describe how topology influences the dynamics of many-body systems when driven far from equilibrium. Our results are succinctly captured by a nonequilibrium topological classification that can be used to predict universal aspects of generic isolated quantum systems as they evolve unitarily in time. By analogy to the classifications used to describe systems in equilibrium, we consider two short-ranged entangled wave functions to be topologically equivalent if they can be interconverted via finite-time unitary evolution governed by a symmetry-respecting Hamiltonian. We demonstrate that this definition captures the salient features of these systems in a broad range of nonequilibrium scenarios. As well as providing conceptual insights into the constraints imposed by topology on many-body dynamics, we discuss the practical implications of our findings. In particular, we show that the characteristic zero-frequency spectroscopic peaks associated with topologically protected edge modes will be broadened by external noise only when the system is trivial in the nonequilibrium classification.

Description

Keywords

cond-mat.str-el, cond-mat.str-el, cond-mat.mes-hall, cond-mat.quant-gas, quant-ph

Journal Title

Physical Review Research

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2643-1564
2643-1564

Volume Title

1

Publisher

American Physical Society (APS)

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P009565/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P034616/1)
Simons Foundation (511029)
EPSRC (1948689)