Many-body theory of false vacuum decay in quantum spin chains

Year: 2026

Authors: Johansen C., Recati A., Carusotto I., Biella A.

Autors Affiliation: CNR INO, Pitaevskii BEC Ctr, Trento, Italy; Univ Trento, Dipartimento Fis, Trento, Italy; INFN TIFPA, Trento Inst Fundamental Phys & Applicat, I-38123 Trento, Italy.

Abstract: In this work, we theoretically investigate the false vacuum decay process in a ferromagnetic quantum spin-1/2 chain. We develop a many-body theory describing the nucleation and the coherent dynamics of true-vacuum bubbles that is analytically tractable and agrees with numerical matrix product state calculations in all parameter regimes up to intermediate times. This theory allows us to identify different regimes in the parameter space and unravel the underlying physical mechanisms, thus offering conceptual insight into the microscopic quantum dynamics of metastable states. In particular, analogies and differences with the cosmological false vacuum decay picture are highlighted and characterized in terms of experimentally observable quantities.

Journal/Review: PHYSICAL REVIEW B

Volume: 114 (14)      Pages from: 144303-1  to: 144303-19

More Information: We acknowledge useful discussions with Gianluca Lagnese, Karel Van Acoleyen, Federica Surace, and Vyacheslav Rychkov. This work has been supported by the Provincia Autonoma di Trento; by the Q@TN Initiative; by the National Quantum Science and Technology Institute through the PNRR MUR Project under Grant No. PE0000023-NQSTI, co-funded by the European Union-NextGeneration EU; by the European Union-NextGeneration EU, within PRIN 2022, PNRR M4C2, Project TANQU 2022FLSPAJ [CUP B53D23005130006]; by European Union’s HORIZON-MSCA-2023-DN-JD programme under the Horizon Europe (HORIZON) Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, Grant Agreement No. 101120296 (TENORS). Part of the numerical calculations for this work have been performed on the Deeplearning cluster supported by the initiative Dipartimenti di Eccellenza 2018-2022 (Legge 232/2016) funded by the MUR.
KeyWords: Fate
DOI: 10.1103/kskv-9mhr