Irreversible Work and Orthogonality Catastrophe in the Aubry-Andr\'e model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the orthogonality catastrophe in the Aubry-Andre9 model, focusing on the irreversible work produced during local quenches and its relation to spectral features like level crossings.

Contribution

It introduces a thermodynamic perspective to analyze orthogonality events in the Aubry-Andre9 model, linking work statistics to spectral properties.

Findings

Irreversible work captures orthogonality events and spectral features.

Plateau structures relate to avoided crossings in the spectrum.

Full statistics reveal detailed spectral signatures.

Abstract

We address the statistical orthogonality catastrophe induced by a local quench in the Aubry-Andr\'e model from the perspective of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. We study the average work and the irreversible work production when quenching the impurity potential in proximity of an orthogonality event. We show how this description is able to capture the level crossings generating the orthogonality and the avoided crossings which causes the plateau-like structures, signature of the Aubry-Andr\'e spectrum, when considering the full statistics of orthogonality events.