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We study the effects of a weakened link in random antiferromagnetic spin chains. We show that healing occurs, and that homogeneity is restored at low energy, in a way that is qualitatively similar to the fate of impurities in clean ferromagnetic spin chains, or in Luttinger liquids with attractive interactions. Healing in the random case occurs even without interactions, and is characteristic of the random singlet phase. Using real space renormalization group and exact diagonalization methods, we characterize this universal healing crossover by studying the entanglement across the weak link. We identify a crossover healing length $L^*$ that separates a regime where the system is cut in half by the weak link from a fixed point where the spin chain is healed. Our results open the way to the study of impurity physics in disordered spin chains., Comment: 4.5 + 3 pages. 3 figures

We combine the formalisms of diagonal entropy and Jarzynski Equality to study the thermodynamic properties of closed quantum systems. Applying this approach to a quantum harmonic oscillator, the diagonal entropy offers a notion of temperature for closed systems away from equilibrium, and allows computing free-energy profiles. We also apply this approach to a hard-core boson lattice model, and discuss measures how to estimate temperature, entropy and measure work distribution functions. This technique offers a path to investigate the non-equilibrium quantum dynamics by means of performing work in a series of quenches., Comment: 6 pages and 4 figures

We study the equilibration dynamics of closed finite quantum systems and address the question of the time needed for the system to equilibrate. In particular we focus on the scaling of the equilibration time T_{\mathrm{eq}} with the system size L . For clean systems we give general arguments predicting T_{\mathrm{eq}}=O(L^{0}) for clustering initial states, while for small quenches around a critical point we find T_{\mathrm{eq}}=O(L^{\zeta}) where \zeta is the dynamical critical exponent. We then analyze noisy systems where exponentially large time scales are known to exist. Specifically we consider the tight-binding model with diagonal impurities and give numerical evidence that in this case T_{\mathrm{eq}}\sim Be^{CL^{\psi}} where B,C, \psi are observable dependent constants. Finally, we consider another noisy system whose evolution dynamics is randomly sampled from a circular unitary ensemble. Here, we are able to prove analytically that T_{\mathrm{eq}}=O(1), thus showing that noise alone is not sufficient for slow equilibration dynamics., Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures. References added

Random bond disorder in antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 Heisenberg ladders is investigated using the Stochastic Series Expansion Quantum Monte Carlo method. We find that the effects of individual bond impurities vary strongly, depending on their position on legs and rungs. We initially focus on how the distribution of local bond energies depends on the impurity concentration. Then we study how the phase diagram of even-leg ladders is affected by random bond doping. We observe Bose glass phases in two regimes ($h' < h \lesssim h_{c1}$ and $h" < h

We study the Ising spin chain with a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction focusing on the static and dynamic properties of the entanglement entropy, following a quantum quench. We show that the effects of the additional anisotropic interaction on the phase diagram and on the dynamics of the system are captured by the properties of the entanglement entropy. In particular, the model provides a way to study the quench dynamics in a system with an energy current. We consider quenches starting from an initial excited state of the Ising spin chain, and we analyze the effects of different initial conditions., Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures

We study the set of random matrix product states (RMPS) introduced in arXiv:0908.3877 as a tool to explore foundational aspects of quantum statistical mechanics. In the present work, we provide an accurate numerical and analytical investigation of the properties of RMPS. We calculate the average state of the ensemble in the non-homogeneous case, and numerically check the validity of this result. We also suggest using RMPS as a tool to approximate properties of general quantum random states. The numerical simulations presented here support the accuracy and efficiency of this approximation. These results suggest that any generalized canonical state can be approximated with high probability by the reduced density matrix of a random MPS, if the average MPS coincide with the associated microcanonical ensemble., Comment: 12 pages, 17 figures; published version

We investigate the subarea law scaling properties of the block entropy in bipartite fermionic systems which do not have a finite Fermi surface. It is found that in gapped regimes the leading subarea term is a negative constant, whereas in critical regimes with point nodes the leading subarea law is a logarithmic additive term. At the phase boundary that separates the critical and non-critical regimes, the subarea scaling shows power-law behavior., Comment: 4 pages,4 figures; published version

The scaling behavior of the entanglement entropy in the two-dimensional random transverse field Ising model is studied numerically through the strong disordered renormalization group method. We find that the leading term of the entanglement entropy always scales linearly with the block size. However, besides this \emph{area law} contribution, we find a subleading logarithmic correction at the quantum critical point. This correction is discussed from the point of view of an underlying percolation transition, both at finite and at zero temperature., Comment: 4.3 pages, 4 figures

Entanglement represents a pure quantum effect involving two or more particles. Spin systems are good candidates for studying this effect and its relation with other collective phenomena ruled by quantum mechanics. While the presence of entangled states can be easily verified, the quantitative estimate of this property is still under investigation. One of the most useful tool in this framework is the concurrence whose definition, albeit limited to $S=1/2$ systems, can be related to the correlators. We consider quantum spin systems defined along chains and square lattices, and described by Heisenberg-like Hamiltonians: our goal is to clarify the relation between entanglement and quantum phase transitions, as well as that between the concurrence the and the specific quantum state of the system., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. To appear in "Open Systems & Information Dynamics" (2006)

We study the field dependence of the entanglement of formation in anisotropic S=1/2 antiferromagnetic chains displaying a T=0 field-driven quantum phase transition. The analysis is carried out via Quantum Monte Carlo simulations. At zero temperature the entanglement estimators show abrupt changes at and around criticality, vanishing below the critical field, in correspondence with an exactly factorized state, and then immediately recovering a finite value upon passing through the quantum phase transition. At the quantum critical point, a deep minimum in the pairwise-to-global entanglement ratio shows that multi-spin entanglement is strongly enhanced; moreover this signature represents a novel way of detecting the quantum phase transition of the system, relying entirely on entanglement estimators., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, v3: improved figures and discussion. Accepted for publication on Phys. Rev. Lett

We study the effect of spin anisotropies on a frustrated quantum antiferromagnet using the J_1-J_2^{XXZ} model on the square lattice. The T=0 and finite-T phase diagrams of this model are obtained utilizing spin-wave theory, exact diagonalization, and quantum Monte Carlo. We find that anisotropic frustration tends to stabilize XY- and Ising-like ordered phases, while the disordered spin-liquid phase is restricted to a small region of the phase diagram. The ordered phases are separated by first-order transitions and exhibit a non-trivial reentrance phenomenon., Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures