Work distribution and edge singularities for generic time-dependent protocols in extended systems

TL;DR

This paper derives exact formulas for the work statistics in extended quantum systems under time-dependent protocols, revealing universal edge singularities and robustness of condensation transitions across different protocols.

Contribution

It provides the first exact formulas for work distribution in generic time-dependent protocols in extended systems, highlighting universal features and robustness of phase transitions.

Findings

Edge singularity exponent is protocol-independent and depends only on initial and final states.

Exact formulas for work statistics are derived for both free bosonic fields and the 1D Ising chain.

The condensation transition in bosonic systems remains stable under various protocols.

Abstract

We study the statistics of the work done by globally changing in time with a generic protocol the mass in a free bosonic field theory with relativistic dispersion and the transverse field in the one-dimensional Ising chain both globally and locally. In the latter case we make the system start from the critical point and we describe it in the scaling limit. We provide exact formulas in all these cases for the full statistics of the work and we show that the low energy part of the distribution of the work displays an edge singularity whose exponent does not depend on the specifics of the protocol that is chosen, and may only depend on the position of the initial and final value with respect to the critical point of the system. We also show that the condensation transition found in the bosonic system for sudden quenches [A. Gambassi and A. Silva, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 109}, 250602 (2012)] is robust with respect to the choice of the protocol.