Long-Range Interacting Many-Body Systems in the Irrep Basis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new approximation method called 'irrep distillation' for analyzing long-range interacting many-body systems, especially when permutation symmetry is weakly broken, by leveraging the structure of irreducible representations of SU(2).

Contribution

The paper proposes the 'irrep distillation' procedure to efficiently approximate long-range many-body systems with weak symmetry breaking, extending the applicability of symmetry-based methods.

Findings

Validates the method through analysis of quantum many-body scars.

Benchmarks the approach against existing approximations.

Explores the dynamical and equilibrium phase transitions.

Abstract

Spin models featuring infinite-range, homogeneous all-to-all interactions can be efficiently described due to the existence of a symmetry-restricted Hilbert subspace and an underlying classical phase space structure. However, when the permutation invariance of the system is weakly broken, such as by long- but finite-range interactions, these tools become mathematically invalid. Here we propose to approximately describe these scenarios by considering additional many-body subspaces according to the hierarchy of their coupling to the symmetric subspace, defined by leveraging the structure of irreducible representations (irreps) of the group $SU(2)$. We put forward a procedure, dubbed "irrep distillation," which defines these additional subspaces to minimize their dimension at each order of approximation. We discuss the validity of our method in connection with the occurrence of quantum many-body scars, benchmark its utility by analyzing the dynamical and equilibrium phase transitions, outline its phenomenology, and compare its use-cases against other approximations of long-range many-body systems.