Theorie Kolloquium | January 27, 16:30

Semiclassical Paths to Many-Body Interference

Klaus Richter

Concepts based on multi-particle interference have been proven very fruitful for better understanding various different many-body phenomena, including quantum dynamics of cold atoms, "many-body localization", correlated transport through molecules, or scattering in photonic networks. We will consider such phenomena using semiclassical techniques based on interfering Feynman paths. A major objective of such approaches to an interacting many-body system is to combine information of its two complementary classical limits, namely a classical system of particles and/or a classical field theory, into a unified framework, providing a picture of many-body interference based on coherent sums over classical solutions. Following this direction we will illustrate recent progress in the semiclassical analysis of many-body interference using a prime example of integrable quantum field theory, the Lieb-Liniger model, describing interacting bosons on a ring. We show that, in the limit of high excitations, its spectrum can be understood by means of suitable generalizations of the so-called Weyl expansion for the smooth part, and a trace formula for the oscillatory part, revealing a spectral shell structure in terms of many-body periodic orbits. We will then show how for large particle number the complementary classical limit of the Lieb-Liniger model, given by a nonlinear Schroedinger equation, admits as well an analysis as an integrable classical system, now near its ground state. This enables the description of a sequence of quantum phase transitions arising for increasing (attractive) interaction, along with an understanding of numerical results for the spreading of information around criticallity. In the opposite case of non-integrable systems, applications of many particle interference comprise coherent backscattering and echo phenomena in Fock space.


University of Regensburg
TP seminar room 0.03
Contact: Alexander Altland