The entanglement membrane in 2d CFT: reflected entropy, RG flow, and information velocity

arXiv:2411.16542

Authors:

Hanzhi Jiang, Márk Mezei, Julio Virrueta

Abstract:

The time evolution of entanglement entropy in generic chaotic many-body systems has an effective description in terms of a minimal membrane, characterised by a tension function. For 2d CFTs, a degenerate tension function reproduces several results regarding the dynamics of the entropy; this stands in contrast to higher dimensions where the tension is non-degenerate. In this paper we use holography to show that, in order to correctly capture the reflected entropy in 2d CFT, one needs to add an additional degree of freedom to the membrane description. Furthermore, we show that the conventional non-degenerate membrane tension function emerges upon introducing a relevant deformation of the CFT, dual to a planar BTZ black hole with scalar hair and with an interior Kasner universe. Finally, we also study the membrane description for reflected entropy and information velocity arXiv:1908.06993 in higher dimensions.

The structure of genotype-phenotype maps makes fitness landscapes navigable

Authors:

Sam F Greenbury, Ard A Louis, Sebastian E Ahnert

Theory of competing excitonic orders in insulating WTe$_2$ monolayers

Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials Physics American Physical Society

Authors:

Yves H Kwan, T Devakul, Shivaji Sondhi, Sa Parameswaran

Abstract:

We develop a theory of the excitonic phase recently proposed as the zero-field insulating state observed near charge neutrality in monolayer WTe$_2$. Using a Hartree-Fock approximation, we numerically identify two distinct gapped excitonic phases: a spin density wave state for weak but non-zero interaction strength $U_0$, and spin spiral order at larger $U_0$, separated by a narrow window of trivial insulator. We introduce a simplified model capturing essential features of the WTe$_2$ band structure, in which the two phases may be viewed as distinct valley ferromagnetic orders. We link the competition between the two phases to the orbital structure of the electronic wavefunctions at the Fermi surface and hence its proximity to the underlying gapped Dirac point in WTe$_2$. We briefly discuss collective modes of the two excitonic states, and comment on implications for experiments.

Two-dimensional, blue phase tactoids

Molecular Physics Taylor and Francis

Authors:

J Yeomans, A Doostmohammadi, L Metselaar

Universal Prethermal Dynamics in Heisenberg Ferromagnets

Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 230601

Authors:

Saraswat Bhattacharyya, Joaquin F. Rodriguez-Nieva, and Eugene Demler

Abstract:

We study the far from equilibrium prethermal dynamics of magnons in Heisenberg ferromagnets. We show that such systems exhibit universal self-similar scaling in momentum and time of the quasiparticle distribution function, with the scaling exponents independent of microscopic details or initial conditions. We argue that the SU(2) symmetry of the Hamiltonian, which leads to a strong momentum-dependent magnon-magnon scattering amplitude, gives rise to qualitatively distinct prethermal dynamics from that recently observed in Bose gases. We compute the scaling exponents using the Boltzmann kinetic equation and incoherent initial conditions that can be realized with microwave pumping of magnons. We also compare our numerical results with analytic estimates of the scaling exponents and demonstrate the robustness of the scaling to variations in the initial conditions. Our predictions can be tested in quench experiments of spin systems in optical lattices and pump-probe experiments in ferromagnetic insulators such as yttrium iron garnet.