Energy-Filtered Quantum States and the Emergence of Nonlocal Correlations.

Energy-filtered quantum states are promising candidates for efficiently simulating thermal states. We explore a protocol designed to transition a product state into an eigenstate located in the middle of the spectrum; this is achieved by gradually reducing its energy variance, which allows us to comprehensively understand the crossover phenomenon and the subsequent convergence toward thermal behavior. We introduce and discuss three energy-filtering regimes (short, medium, and long), and we interpret them as stages of thermalization.

Macroscopic Effects of Localized Measurements in Jammed States of Quantum Spin Chains.

A quantum jammed state can be seen as a state where the phase space available to particles shrinks to zero, an interpretation quite accurate in integrable systems, where stable quasiparticles scatter elastically. We consider the integrable dual folded XXZ model, which is equivalent to the XXZ model in the limit of large anisotropy. We perform a jamming-breaking localized measurement in a jammed state.

Global Quenches after Localized Perturbations.

We investigate the effect of a single spin flip preceding a global quench between translationally invariant local Hamiltonians in spin-1/2 chains. The effect of the localized perturbation does not fade away however large the distance from the perturbation is. In particular, translational invariance is not restored and the infinite-time limit depends on whether the spin was flipped or not.

Prethermalization at Low Temperature: The Scent of Long-Range Order.

Nonequilibrium time evolution in isolated many-body quantum systems generally results in thermalization. However, the relaxation process can be very slow, and quasistationary nonthermal plateaux are often observed at intermediate times. The paradigmatic example is a quantum quench in an integrable model with weak integrability breaking; for a long time, the state cannot escape the constraints imposed by the approximate integrability.

Transport in Out-of-Equilibrium XXZ Chains: Exact Profiles of Charges and Currents.

We consider the nonequilibrium time evolution of piecewise homogeneous states in the XXZ spin-1/2 chain, a paradigmatic example of an interacting integrable model. The initial state can be thought of as the result of joining chains with different global properties. Through dephasing, at late times, the state becomes locally equivalent to a stationary state which explicitly depends on position and time.

Determination of the Nonequilibrium Steady State Emerging from a Defect.

We consider the nonequilibrium time evolution of a translationally invariant state under a Hamiltonian with a localized defect. We discern the situations where a light cone spreads out from the defect and separates the system into regions with macroscopically different properties. We identify the light cone and propose a procedure to obtain a (quasi)stationary state describing the late time dynamics of local observables.

High-performance solution of the transport problem in a graphene armchair structure with a generic potential.

We propose an efficient numerical method to study the transport properties of armchair graphene ribbons in the presence of a generic external potential. The method is based on a continuum envelope-function description with physical boundary conditions. The envelope functions are computed in the reciprocal space, and the transmission is then obtained with a recursive scattering matrix approach.

Dynamical correlations after a quantum quench.

We consider dynamic (non-equal-time) correlation functions of local observables after a quantum quench. We show that, in the absence of long-range interactions in the final Hamiltonian, the dynamics is determined by the same ensemble that describes static (equal-time) correlations. For many integrable models, static correlation functions of local observables after a quantum quench relax to stationary values, which are described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble.

Quantum quench in the transverse-field Ising chain.

We consider the time evolution of observables in the transverse-field Ising chain after a sudden quench of the magnetic field. We provide exact analytical results for the asymptotic time and distance dependence of one- and two-point correlation functions of the order parameter. We employ two complementary approaches based on asymptotic evaluations of determinants and form-factor sums.