Lifetime of Almost Strong Edge-Mode Operators in One-Dimensional, Interacting, Symmetry Protected Topological Phases.

Almost strong edge-mode operators arising at the boundaries of certain interacting one-dimensional symmetry protected topological phases with Z_{2} symmetry have infinite temperature lifetimes that are nonperturbatively long in the integrability breaking terms, making them promising as bits for quantum information processing. We extract the lifetime of these edge-mode operators for small system sizes as well as in the thermodynamic limit. For the latter, a Lanczos scheme is employed to map the operator dynamics to a one-dimensional tight-binding model of a single particle in Krylov space. We find this model to be that of a spatially inhomogeneous Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model with a hopping amplitude that increases away from the boundary, and a dimerization that decreases away from the boundary. We associate this dimerized or staggered structure with the existence of the almost strong mode. Thus, the short time dynamics of the almost strong mode is that of the edge mode of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, while the long time dynamics involves decay due to tunneling out of that mode, followed by chaotic operator spreading. We also show that competing scattering processes can lead to interference effects that can significantly enhance the lifetime.

Free-Surface Variational Principle for an Incompressible Fluid with Odd Viscosity.

We present variational and Hamiltonian formulations of incompressible fluid dynamics with a free surface and nonvanishing odd viscosity. We show that within the variational principle the odd viscosity contribution corresponds to geometric boundary terms. These boundary terms modify Zakharov's Poisson brackets and lead to a new type of boundary dynamics. The modified boundary conditions have a natural geometric interpretation describing an additional pressure at the free surface proportional to the angular velocity of the surface itself. These boundary conditions are believed to be universal since the proposed hydrodynamic action is fully determined by the symmetries of the system.

Odd viscosity in chiral active fluids.

We study the hydrodynamics of fluids composed of self-spinning objects such as chiral grains or colloidal particles subject to torques. These chiral active fluids break both parity and time-reversal symmetries in their non-equilibrium steady states. As a result, the constitutive relations of chiral active media display a dissipationless linear-response coefficient called odd (or equivalently, Hall) viscosity. This odd viscosity does not lead to energy dissipation, but gives rise to a flow perpendicular to applied pressure. We show how odd viscosity arises from non-linear equations of hydrodynamics with rotational degrees of freedom, once linearized around a non-equilibrium steady state characterized by large spinning speeds. Next, we explore odd viscosity in compressible fluids and suggest how our findings can be tested in the context of shock propagation experiments. Finally, we show how odd viscosity in weakly compressible chiral active fluids can lead to density and pressure excess within vortex cores.

Boundary Effective Action for Quantum Hall States.

We consider quantum Hall states on a space with boundary, focusing on the aspects of the edge physics which are completely determined by the symmetries of the problem. There are four distinct terms of Chern-Simons type that appear in the low-energy effective action of the state. Two of these protect gapless edge modes. They describe Hall conductance and, with some provisions, thermal Hall conductance. The remaining two, including the Wen-Zee term, which contributes to the Hall viscosity, do not protect gapless edge modes but are instead related to the local boundary response fixed by symmetries. We highlight some basic features of this response. It follows that the coefficient of the Wen-Zee term can change across an interface without closing a gap or breaking a symmetry.

Thermal Hall effect and geometry with torsion.

We formulate a geometric framework that allows us to study momentum and energy transport in nonrelativistic systems. It amounts to a coupling of the nonrelativistic system to the Newton-Cartan (NC) geometry with torsion. The approach generalizes the classic Luttinger's formulation of thermal transport. In particular, we clarify the geometric meaning of the fields conjugated to energy and energy current. These fields describe the geometric background with nonvanishing temporal torsion. We use the developed formalism to construct the equilibrium partition function of a nonrelativistic system coupled to the NC geometry in 2+1 dimensions and to derive various thermodynamic relations.

Framing anomaly in the effective theory of the fractional quantum Hall effect.

We consider the geometric part of the effective action for the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE). It is shown that accounting for the framing anomaly of the quantum Chern-Simons theory is essential to obtain the correct gravitational linear response functions. In the lowest order in gradients, the linear response generating functional includes Chern-Simons, Wen-Zee, and gravitational Chern-Simons terms. The latter term has a contribution from the framing anomaly which fixes the value of thermal Hall conductivity and contributes to the Hall viscosity of the FQH states on a sphere. We also discuss the effects of the framing anomaly on linear responses for non-Abelian FQH states.

Anomalous hydrodynamics of two-dimensional vortex fluids.

A dense system of vortices can be treated as a fluid and itself could be described in terms of hydrodynamics. We develop the hydrodynamics of the vortex fluid. This hydrodynamics captures characteristics of fluid flows averaged over fast circulations in the intervortex space. The hydrodynamics of the vortex fluid features the anomalous stress absent in Euler's hydrodynamics. The anomalous stress yields a number of interesting effects. Some of them are a deflection of streamlines, a correction to the Bernoulli law, and an accumulation of vortices in regions with high curvature in the curved space. The origin of the anomalous stresses is a divergence of intervortex interactions at the microscale which manifest at the macroscale. We obtain the hydrodynamics of the vortex fluid from the Kirchhoff equations for dynamics of pointlike vortices.

Density-curvature response and gravitational anomaly.

We study constraints imposed by the Galilean invariance on linear electromagnetic and elastic responses of two-dimensional gapped systems in a background magnetic field. Exact relations between response functions following from the Ward identities are derived. In addition to the viscosity-conductivity relations known in the literature, we find new relations between the density-curvature response and the thermal Hall response.

Characterizing correlations with full counting statistics: classical Ising and quantum XY spin chains.

We propose to describe correlations in classical and quantum systems in terms of full counting statistics of a suitably chosen discrete observable. The method is illustrated with two exactly solvable examples: the classical one-dimensional Ising model and the quantum spin-1/2 XY chain. For the one-dimensional Ising model, our method results in a phase diagram with two phases distinguishable by the long-distance behavior of the Jordan-Wigner strings. For the anisotropic spin-1/2 XY chain in a transverse magnetic field, we compute the full counting statistics of the magnetization and use it to classify quantum phases of the chain. The method, in this case, reproduces the previously known phase diagram. We also discuss the relation between our approach and the Lee-Yang theory of zeros of the partition function.

Nonlinear quantum shock waves in fractional quantum Hall edge states.

Using the Calogero model as an example, we show that the transport in interacting nondissipative electronic systems is essentially nonlinear and unstable. Nonlinear effects are due to the curvature of the electronic spectrum near the Fermi energy. As is typical for nonlinear systems, a propagating semiclassical wave packet develops a shock wave at a finite time. A wave packet collapses into oscillatory features which further evolve into regularly structured localized pulses carrying a fractionally quantized charge. The Calogero model can be used to describe fractional quantum Hall edge states. We discuss perspectives of observation of quantum shock waves and a direct measurement of the fractional charge in fractional quantum Hall edge states.

Quantum hydrodynamics, the quantum benjamin-ono equation, and the Calogero model.

Collective field theory for the Calogero model represents particles with fractional statistics in terms of hydrodynamic modes--density and velocity fields. We show that the quantum hydrodynamics of this model can be written as a single evolution equation on a real holomorphic Bose field--the quantum integrable Benjamin-Ono equation. It renders tools of integrable systems to studies of nonlinear dynamics of 1D quantum liquids.