Unifying Finite-Temperature Dynamical and Excited-State Quantum Phase Transitions

Abstract

In recent years, various notions of dynamical phase transitions have emerged to describe far-from-equilibrium criticality. A unifying framework connecting these different concepts is still missing, and would provide significant progress towards understanding far-from-equilibrium quantum many-body universality. Initializing our system in a thermal ensemble and subsequently performing quantum quenches in the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, we establish a direct connection between excited-state quantum phase transitions (ESQPTs) and two major types of dynamical phase transitions (DPTs), by relating the phases of the latter to the critical energies and conservation laws in the former. Our work provides further insight into how various concepts of non-ground-state criticality are intimately connected, paving the way for a unified framework of far-from-equilibrium universality.