The joint action of a magnetic field and of interactions is crucial for the appearance of exotic quantum phenomena, such as the quantum Hall effect. Owing to their rich nuclear structure, equivalent to an additional synthetic dimension, one-dimensional alkaline-earth(-like) fermionic gases with synthetic gauge potential and atomic contact repulsion may display similar related properties. Here we show the existence and the features of a hierarchy of fractional insulating and conducting states by means of analytical and numerical methods. We demonstrate that the gapped states are characterized by density and magnetic order emerging solely for gases with effective nuclear spin larger than 1/2, whereas the gapless phases can support helical modes. We finally argue that these states are related to an unconventional fractional quantum Hall effect in the thin-torus limit and that their properties can be studied in state-of-the-art laboratories.

We study the entanglement entropies in one-dimensional open critical systems, whose effective description is given by a conformal field theory with boundaries. We show that for pure-state systems formed by the ground state or by the excited states associated to primary fields, the entanglement entropies have a finite-size behavior that depends on the correlation of the underlying field theory. The analytical results are checked numerically, finding excellent agreement for the quantum chains ruled by the theories with central charge c = 1/2 and c = 1.

Alkaline-earth(-like) atoms, trapped in optical lattices and in the presence of an external gauge field, can form insulating states at given fractional fillings. We will show that, by exploiting these properties, it is possible to realize a topological fractional pump. Our analysis is based on a many-body adiabatic expansion, on simulations with time-dependent matrix product states, and, for a specific form of atom-atom interaction, on an exactly solvable model of fractional pump. The numerical simulations allow us to consider a realistic setup amenable of an experimental realization. As a further consequence, the measure of the center-of-mass shift of the atomic cloud would constitute the first measurement of a many-body Chern number in a cold-atom experiment.

Synthetic ladders realized with one-dimensional alkaline-earth(-like) fermionic gases and subject to a gauge field represent a promising environment for the investigation of quantum Hall physics with ultracold atoms. Using density-matrix renormalization group calculations, we study how the quantum Hall-like chiral edge currents are affected by repulsive atom-atom interactions. We relate the properties of such currents to the asymmetry of the spin resolved momentum distribution function, a quantity which is easily addressable in state-of-art experiments. We show that repulsive interactions significantly enhance the chiral currents. Our numerical simulations are performed for atoms with two and three internal spin states.

Abstract. We discuss the Rényi entanglement entropies of descendant states in critical onedimensional systems with boundaries, that map to boundary conformal field theories in the scaling limit. We unify the previous conformal-field-theory approaches to describe primary and descendant states in systems with both open and closed boundaries. We provide universal expressions for the first two descendants in the identity family. We apply our technique to critical systems belonging to different universality classes with non-trivial boundary conditions that preserve conformal invariance, and find excellent agreement with numerical results obtained for finite spin chains. We also demonstrate that entanglement entropies are a powerful tool to resolve degeneracy of higher excited states in critical lattice models.

We show how entanglement entropies allow for the estimation of quasi-long-range order in one-dimensional systems whose low-energy physics is well captured by the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid universality class. First, we check our procedure in the exactly solvable XXZ spin-1/2 chain in its entire critical region, finding very good agreement with Bethe ansatz results. Then, we show how phase transitions between different dominant orders may be efficiently estimated by considering the superfluid-charge density wave transition in a system of dipolar bosons. Finally, we discuss the application of this method to multispecies systems such as the one-dimensional Hubbard model. Our work represents the first proof of a direct relationship between the Luttinger parameter and Rényi entropies in both bosonic and fermionic lattice models.

We study the time evolution of entanglement entropy and entanglement spectrum in a finite-size system which crosses a quantum phase transition at different speeds. We focus on the transversefield Ising model with a time-dependent magnetic field, which is linearly tuned on a time scale τ . The time evolution of the entanglement entropy displays different regimes depending on the value of τ , showing also oscillations which depend on the instantaneous energy spectrum. The entanglement spectrum is characterized by a rich dynamics where multiple crossings take place with a gap-dependent frequency. Moreover, we investigate the Kibble-Zurek scaling of entanglement entropy and Schmidt gap.

The expansion dynamics of bosonic gases in optical lattices has recently been the focus of an incresing attention, both experimental and theoretical. We consider, by means of numerical Bethe ansatz, the expansion dynamics of initially confined wave packets of two interacting bosons on a lattice. We show that a correspondence between the asymptotic expansion velocities and the projection of the evolved wave function over the bound states of the system exists, clarifying the existing picture for such situations. Moreover, we investigate the role of the lattice in this kind of evolution.