CMTC Symposium

Date
Thu, Oct 22, 2020 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Description

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2:30 pm - Topological Defect Networks - A Framework for Fractons

Speaker: Danny Bulmash

Abstract: Fracton phases exhibit striking behavior, including deconfined excitations which
cannot move freely in isolation and subextensive ground state degeneracy, which appears to
render them beyond the standard topological quantum field theory (TQFT) paradigm for
classifying gapped quantum matter. Here, we show that topological defect networks---networks
of topological defects embedded in “stratified” 3+1D TQFTs---provide a unified framework for
describing various types of gapped fracton phases. In this picture, the sub-dimensional
excitations characteristic of fractonic matter are a consequence of mobility restrictions imposed
by the defect network. We conjecture that all gapped phases, including fracton phases, admit a
topological defect network description and support this claim by explicitly providing such a
construction for many well-known fracton models.
Reference: arXiv: 2002.05166

3:00 pm - Dynamics of Renyi entropy in coupled Brownian SYK model

Speaker: Shaokai Jian

Abstract: We study the time evolution of Renyi entropy between two coupled Brownian SYK
models starting from a product state. The Renyi entropy grows linearly and then saturates to the
coarse grained entropy. This Page curve is obtained by two different methods, the saddle point
analysis and the operator dynamics. As a Brownian circuit, the Page curve is governed by
operator dynamics, which we derive in the form of the master equation. Behind this complicated
master equation, a more physical explanation is revealed with the help of saddle point method:
the replica-diagonal and replica-wormhole saddles are responsible for the linear growth and the
saturation of Renyi entropy, respectively.

3:30 pm - Fermi surface topology and quasiparticle properties in an anisotropic
electron gas

Speaker: Seongjin Ahn

Abstract: We have carried out a comprehensive investigation on the renormalized Fermi
surface and the quasiparticle properties in a two-dimensional electron gas in the presence of
mass anisotropy. We first show that the interacting Fermi surface deviates from an ellipse, but
not in an arbitrary way: The interacting Fermi surface has only two qualitatively distinct shapes,
and its deviation from an ellipse is quantitatively rather small except for very low electron
density, providing justification for the widely used elliptical Fermi surface approximation. We
then investigate the quasiparticle properties by calculating the self-energy, the spectral function,
the scattering rate, and the effective mass. We find novel anisotropic features of quasiparticle
properties that are not captured by the commonly used isotropic approximation where the
anisotropic effective mass is replaced by the isotropic averaged density-of-state mass.
Reference: arXiv: 2002.12532

4:00 pm - Discussion