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arXiv:0907.1564 · Physical Review B

Classical to quantum mapping for an unconventional phase transition in a three-dimensional classical dimer model

Stephen Powell, J. T. Chalker

Published Oct 15, 2009• 26 citations
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Abstract

We study the transition between a Coulomb phase and a dimer crystal observed in numerical simulations of the three-dimensional classical dimer model, by mapping it to a quantum model of bosons in two dimensions. The quantum phase transition that results, from a superfluid to a Mott insulator at fractional filling, belongs to a class that cannot be described within the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm. Using a second mapping, to a dual model of vortices, we show that the long-wavelength physics near the transition is described by a U(1) gauge theory with SU(2) matter fields.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.80.134413

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We study the transition between a Coulomb phase and a dimer crystal observed in numerical simulations of the three-dimensional classical dimer model, by mapping it to a quantum model of bosons in two dimensions. The quantum phase transition that results, from a superfluid to a Mott insulator at fractional filling, belongs to a class that cannot be described within the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm. Using a second mapping, to a dual model of vortices, we show that the long-wavelength physics near the transition is described by a U(1) gauge theory with SU(2) matter fields.
We derive a continuum theory for the phase transition in a classical dimer model on the cubic lattice, observed in recent Monte Carlo simulations. Our derivation relies on the mapping from a three-dimensional classical problem to a two-dimensional quantum problem, by which the dimer model is related to a model of hard-core bosons on the kagome lattice. The dimer-ordering transition becomes a superfluid-Mott insulator quantum phase transition at fractional filling, described by an SU(2)-invariant continuum theory.
Phase transitions occupy a central role in physics, due both to their experimental ubiquity and their fundamental conceptual importance. The explanation of universality at phase transitions was the great success of the theory formulated by Ginzburg and Landau, and extended through the renormalization group by Wilson. However, recent theoretical suggestions have challenged this point of view in certain situations. In this Letter we report the first large-scale simulations of a three-dimensional model proposed to be a candidate for requiring a description beyond the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson framework: we study the phase transition from the dimer crystal to the Coulomb phase in the cubic dimer model. Our numerical results strongly indicate that the transition is continuous and is compatible with a tricritical universality class, at variance with previous proposals.
Several simple models of strongly correlated bosons on three-dimensional lattices have been shown to possess exotic fractionalized Mott insulating phases with a gapless ``photon'' excitation. In this paper we show how to view the physics of this ``Coulomb'' state in terms of the excitations of proximate superfluid. We argue for the presence of ordered vortex cores with a broken discrete symmetry in the nearby superfluid phase and that proliferating these degenerate but distinct vortices with equal amplitudes produces the Coulomb phase. This provides a simple physical description of the origin of the exotic excitations of the Coulomb state. The physical picture is formalized by means of a dual description of three-dimensional bosonic systems in terms of fluctuating quantum mechanical vortex loops. Such a dual formulation is extensively developed. It is shown how the Coulomb phase (as well as various other familiar phases) of three-dimensional bosonic systems may be described in this vortex loop theory. For bosons at half-filling and the closely related system of spin-1∕21∕21∕2 quantum magnets on a cubic lattice, fractionalized phases as well as bond- or ``box''-ordered states are possible. The latter are analyzed by an extension of techniques previously developed in two spatial dimensions. The relation between these ``confining'' phases with broken translational symmetry and the fractionalized Coulomb phase is exposed.
We study critical behavior in the classical cubic dimer model (CDM) in the presence of a finite density of monomers. With attractive interactions between parallel dimers, the monomer-free CDM exhibits an unconventional transition from a Coulomb phase to a dimer crystal. Monomers act as charges (or monopoles) in the Coulomb phase and, at nonzero density, lead to a standard Landau-type transition. We use large-scale Monte Carlo simulations to study the system in the neighborhood of the critical point, and find results in agreement with detailed predictions of scaling theory. Going beyond previous studies of the transition in the absence of monomers, we explicitly confirm the distinction between conventional and unconventional criticality, and quantitatively demonstrate the crossover between the two. Our results also provide additional evidence for the theoretical claim that the transition in the CDM belongs in the same universality class as the deconfined quantum critical point in the SU(2)\mathrm{SU}(2)SU(2) JQ model.
Quantum phase transitions in Mott insulators do not fit easily into the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm.A recently proposed alternative to it is the so-called deconfined quantum criticality scenario, providing a new paradigm for quantum phase transitions.In this context it has recently been proposed that a second-order phase transition would occur in a two-dimensional spin 1=2 quantum antiferromagnet in the deep easy-plane limit.A check of this conjecture is important for understanding the phase structure of Mott insulators.To this end we have performed large-scale Monte Carlo simulations on an effective gauge theory for this system, including a Berry-phase term that projects out the S 1=2 sector.The result is a first-order phase transition, thus contradicting the conjecture.
We present an unbiased numerical density-matrix renormalization group study of the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model supplemented by nearest-neighbor Coulomb interaction and bond dimerization. It places the emphasis on the determination of the ground-state phase diagram and shows that, besides dimerized Mott and density-wave insulating phases, an intermediate symmetry-protected topological Haldane insulator emerges at weak Coulomb interactions for filling factor one, which disappears, however, when the dimerization becomes too large. Analyzing the critical behavior of the model, we prove that the phase boundaries of the Haldane phase to Mott insulator and density-wave states belong to the Gaussian and Ising universality classes with central charges c=1c=1c=1 and c=1/2c=1/2c=1/2, respectively, and merge in a tricritical point. Interestingly we can demonstrate a direct Ising quantum phase transition between the dimerized Mott and density-wave phases above the tricritical point. The corresponding transition line terminates at a critical end point that belongs to the universality class of the dilute Ising model with c=7/10c=7/10c=7/10. At even stronger Coulomb interactions the transition becomes first order.