Denis Bernard

We study the fluctuation statistics of integrated currents in noisy quantum diffusive systems, focusing on the quantum symmetric simple exclusion and inclusion processes (QSSEPs and QSSIPs). These one-dimensional fermionic (QSSEP) and bosonic (QSSIP) models feature stochastic nearest-neighbor hopping driven by Brownian noise, together with boundary injection and removal processes. They provide solvable microscopic settings in which quantum coherence coexists with diffusion. Upon noise averaging, their dynamics reduce to those of the classical SSEP and SSIP. We show that the cumulant-generating function of the integrated current, at large scales, obeys a large deviation principle. To leading order in system size and for each noise realization, it converges to that of the corresponding classical process, establishing a classical typicality of current fluctuations in these noisy quantum systems. We further demonstrate a direct connection with macroscopic fluctuation theory (MFT), showing that the large-scale equations satisfied by biased quantum densities coincide with the steady-state Hamilton equations of MFT, thereby providing a microscopic quantum justification of the MFT framework in these models. Finally, we identify the leading finite-size corrections to the current statistics. We show the existence of subleading contributions of purely quantum origin, which are absent in the corresponding classical setting, and provide their explicit expressions for the second and third current cumulants. These quantum corrections are amenable to direct experimental or numerical verification, provided sufficient control over the noise realizations can be achieved. Their presence points toward the necessity of a quantum extension of MFT.

We study the melting of a domain wall in the quantum simple exclusion process with all-to-all hoppings (a.k.a. the charged SYK 2 model). We show that the real-time dynamics of physical quantities of interest can be obtained exploiting spectral results in random matrix theory. We first show that the eigenvalues of the correlation matrix corresponding to the initially charged subsystem evolve according to a Jacobi process, which is defined in terms of a closed system of stochastic differential equations. In turn, this observation allows us to obtain the real-time dynamics of all the eigenvalue moments. We present two physical applications. First, we study the dynamics of the averaged von Neumann entanglement entropy, arriving at a fully explicit expression in the thermodynamic limit. Second, we compute analytically the full-counting statistics of the charge. Our formula allows us to perform a thorough comparison with the full-counting statistics of the classical simple exclusion process. Notably, we show that, in the thermodynamic limit, the quantum and classical full-counting statistics coincide, with no finite-time corrections.

The quantum symmetric simple exclusion process (QSSEP) is a recent extension of the symmetric simple exclusion process, designed to model quantum coherent fluctuating effects in noisy diffusive systems. It models stochastic nearest-neighbor fermionic hopping on a lattice, possibly driven out-of-equilibrium by boundary processes. We present a direct formulation in the continuum, and establish how this formulation captures the scaling limit of the discrete version. In the continuum, QSSEP emerges as a non-commutative process, driven by free increments, conditioned on the algebra of functions on the ambiant space to encode spatial correlations. We actually develop a more general framework dealing with conditioned orbits with free increments which may find applications beyond the present context. We view this construction as a preliminary step toward formulating a quantum extension of the macroscopic fluctuation theory.

The QSSEP, short for quantum symmetric simple exclusion process, is a paradigm model for stochastic quantum dynamics. Averaging over the noise, the quantum dynamics reduce to the well-studied SSEP (symmetric simple exclusion process). These notes provide an introduction to quantum exclusion processes, focusing on the example of QSSEP and its connection to free probability, with an emphasis on mathematical aspects.

We consider the boundary driven Quantum Symmetric Simple Inclusion Process (QSSIP) which describes a one-dimensional system of bosonic particles with stochastic nearest-neighbor hopping, modeled as a Brownian motion, with gain/loss processes at the endpoints of the chain driving the system out-of-equilibrium. Although the averaged QSSIP dynamics differs from that of the Quantum Symmetric Simple Exclusion Process (QSSEP)-the analogous system where bosons are replaced by fermions-we show that, paradoxically, the dynamics of their matrices of two-point functions, along with all their fluctuations, coincide. In contrary, the underlying classical models differs significantly, as the bosonic statistics allow the inclusion of multiple particles at the same site, in contrast to (symmetric) simple exclusion processes (SSEP). We provide an exact derivation of the large deviation function of density fluctuations in QSSIP and, as a consequence, in the classical inclusion process (SSIP) by exploiting its quantum formulation. Remarkably, our study highlights that, both in QSSEP and QSSIP, fluctuations of the local densities are typically classical, i.e., the cumulant generating functions of the local densities are asymptotically self-averaging and converge toward those of the classical SSEP and SSIP, realization-wise. This provides a test of the conjectured almost sure classical behavior of transport fluctuations, at leading order in the system size, in noisy diffusive quantum many-body systems.

Studies of random unitary circuits have shown that the calculation of Rényi entropies of entanglement can be mapped to classical statistical mechanics problems in spacetime. In this paper, we develop an analogous spacetime picture of entanglement generation for random free or weakly interacting fermion systems without conservation laws. We first study a free-fermion model, namely a one-dimensional chain of Majorana modes with nearest-neighbor hoppings, random in both space and time. We analyze the N th Rényi entropy of entanglement using a replica formalism, and we show that the effective model is equivalent to an SO ( 2 N ) Heisenberg spin chain evolving in imaginary time. By applying a saddle-point approximation to the coherent states path integral for the N = 2 case, we arrive at a semiclassical picture for the dynamics of the entanglement purity, in terms of two classical fields in spacetime. The classical solutions involve a smooth domain wall that interpolates between two values, with the width of this smooth domain wall spreading diffusively in time. We then study how adding weak interactions to the free-fermion model modifies this spacetime picture. Interactions reduce the symmetry of the effective continuum description. As a result the width of the entanglement domain wall remains finite, rather than growing diffusively in time. This yields a crossover from diffusive to ballistic spreading of information.

We perform a systematic symmetry classification of the Markov generators of classical stochastic processes. Our classification scheme is based on the action of involutive symmetry transformations of a real Markov generator, extending the Bernard-LeClair scheme to the arena of classical stochastic processes and leading to a set of up to fifteen allowed symmetry classes. We construct families of solutions of arbitrary matrix dimensions for five of these classes with a simple physical interpretation of particles hopping on multipartite graphs. In the remaining classes, such a simple construction is prevented by the positivity of entries of the generator particular to classical stochastic processes, which imposes a further requirement beyond the usual symmetry classification constraints. We partially overcome this difficulty by resorting to a stochastic optimization algorithm, finding specific examples of generators of small matrix dimensions in six further classes, leaving the existence of the final four allowed classes an open problem. Our symmetry-based results unveil new possibilities in the dynamics of classical stochastic processes: Kramers degeneracy of eigenvalue pairs, dihedral symmetry of the spectra of Markov generators, and time reversal properties of stochastic trajectories and correlation functions.

We study measurement-induced phases of free fermion systems with U ( 1 ) symmetry. Following a recent approach developed for Majorana chains, we derive a field theory description for the purity and bipartite entanglement at large space and timescales. We focus on a multiflavor one-dimensional chain with random complex hoppings and continuous monitoring of the local fermion density. By means of the replica trick, and using the number of flavors as a large parameter controlling our approximations, we derive an effective field theory made up of a SU(N) nonlinear sigma model ( NL σ M ) coupled to fluctuating hydrodynamics. Contrary to the case of noninteracting Majorana fermions, displaying no U ( 1 ) symmetry, we find that the bipartite entanglement entropy satisfies an area law for all monitoring rates but with a nontrivial scaling of entanglement when the correlation length is large. We provide numerical evidence supporting our claims. We briefly show how imposing a reality condition on the hoppings can change the NL σ M and also discuss higher-dimensional generalizations. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

In this paper, we introduce a new class of large structured random matrices characterized by four fundamental properties which we discuss. We prove that this class is stable under matrix-valued and pointwise nonlinear operations. We then formulate an efficient method, based on an extremization problem, for computing the spectrum of subblocks of such large structured random matrices. We present different proofs — combinatorial or algebraic — of the validity of this method, which all have some connection with free probability. We illustrate this method with well-known examples of unstructured matrices, including Haar randomly rotated matrices, as well as with the example of structured random matrices arising in the quantum symmetric simple exclusion process.