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Quantum Simulation of the Abelian Higgs Lattice Gauge Theory and Quantum Thermalization in Ultracold-Atom Systems

Abstract

This thesis presents our recent studies on quantum simulation of the Abelian Higgs lattice gauge theory with quantum systems engineered with ultracold atoms in optical lattices and quantum equilibration and thermalization dynamics in the context of Joule expansion in cold atom systems.

In the first part, we give proposals for the analog quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories with cold atoms in optical lattices with current experimental techniques, aiming at maximal simplicity on both the theoretical and experimental side. We search for the suitable platform for quantum simulation of the $(1+1)$-dimensional Abelian Higgs model, which is the scalar quantum electrodynamics replacing the fermionic fields by complex scalar fields. We use a discrete tensor reformulation to smoothly connect the space-time isotropic version used in most numerical lattice simulations to the continuous-time limit corresponding to the Hamiltonian formulation. We propose to use the Bose Hubbard model as a quantum simulator to probe the conformal Calabrese-Cardy scaling of its O(2) limit with a chemical potential. We also propose to use a physical multileg ladder of atoms trapped in optical lattices and interacting with Rydberg-dressed interactions to quantum simulate the model and measure the Polyakov loop. Numeric results from the Monte Carlo, the tensor renormalization group and the density matrix renormalization group techniques are cross-checked to support our proposals.

In the second part of this thesis, we investigate the Joule expansion of nonintegrable quantum systems that contain bosons or spinless fermions in one-dimensional lattices. Initially a barrier confines the particles to be in half of the system in a thermal state described by the canonical ensemble and is removed at time $t = 0$. We study the properties of the time-evolved density matrix, the diagonal ensemble density matrix and the corresponding canonical ensemble density matrix with an effective temperature determined by the total energy conservation. We discuss the equilibration and thermalization for the R enyi entropy of subsystems, few-body observables and reduced density matrices in subsystems. We finally discuss the difference between bosons and fermions in finite size scaling of the effective temperature. We propose the Joule expansion as a way to dynamically create negative temperature states for fermion systems with repulsive interactions.

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