Boundary perturbation effects in quantum systems with conserved energy and continuous symmetry
Abstract
We investigate one-dimensional systems with both energy conservation and a continuous symmetry, focusing on the impact of a boundary perturbation that breaks the continuous symmetry. Our study reveals two distinct dynamical phases: one in which the corresponding charge exhibits extensive fluctuations, and another where the charge remains conserved. These phases appear in both free and interacting models. We interpret this behavior through a boundary-induced pumping mechanism, which estimates the amplitude connecting two degenerate states from different charge sectors via a local charge-non-conserving operator. In the Floquet setting, we show that the frozen phase can survive at high driving frequencies but vanishes at low frequencies. This phenomenon is exact in free-fermion systems in the thermodynamic limit, but in interacting systems it appears only at finite system size. The emergence of the charge-frozen phase is attributed to effective energy conservation, and we demonstrate that this phase disappears when effective energy conservation is broken or replaced by other symmetries.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Quantum chaos and dynamical systems
Spectral Theory in Mathematical Physics
Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Physical review. B./Physical review. B
- Volume
- 113
- Issue
- 9
- Publication date
- 23 February 2026
- Language
- EN