We study the effects of random fluctuations on quantum phase transitions by the energy gap analysis. For the infinite-ranged spin-glass models with a transverse field, we find that a strong sample-to-sample fluctuation effect leads to broad distributions of the energy gap. As a result, the linear, spin-glass, and nonlinear susceptibilities behave differently from each other. The power-law tail of the distribution implies a quantum Griffiths-like effect that could be observed in various random quantum systems. We also discuss the mechanisms of the phase transition in terms of the energy gap by comparing the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model and random energy model, which demonstrate the difference between the continuous and discontinuous phase transitions.
We develop a mean-field theory for random quantum spin systems using the spin coherent state path integral representation. After the model is reduced to the mean-field one-body Hamiltonian, the integral is analyzed with the aid of several methods such as the semiclassical method and the gauge transformation. As an application we consider the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model in a transverse field. Using the Landau expansion and its improved versions, we give a detailed analysis of the imaginary-time dependence of the order parameters. Integrating out the quantum part of the order parameters, we obtain the effective renormalized free energy written in terms of the classically defined order parameters. Our method allows us to obtain the spin glass-paramagnetic phase transition point $\ensuremath{\Gamma}∕J\ensuremath{\sim}1.62$ at
T=0.
The behavior of the nonlinear susceptibility ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{3}$ and its relation to the spin-glass transition temperature
Tf in the presence of random fields are investigated. To accomplish this task, the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model is studied through the replica formalism, within a one-step replica-symmetry-breaking procedure. In addition, the dependence of the Almeida-Thouless eigenvalue ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{\mathrm{AT}}$ (replicon) on the random fields is analyzed. Particularly, in the absence of random fields, the temperature
Tf can be traced by a divergence in the spin-glass susceptibility ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{\mathrm{SG}}$, which presents a term inversely proportional to the replicon ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{\mathrm{AT}}$. As a result of a relation between ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{\mathrm{SG}}$ and ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{3}$, the latter also presents a divergence at
Tf, which comes as a direct consequence of ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{\mathrm{AT}}=0$ at
Tf. However, our results show that, in the presence of random fields, ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{3}$ presents a rounded maximum at a temperature
T∗ which does not coincide with the spin-glass transition temperature
Tf (i.e.,
T∗>Tf for a given applied random field). Thus, the maximum value of ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{3}$ at
T∗ reflects the effects of the random fields in the paramagnetic phase instead of the nontrivial ergodicity breaking associated with the spin-glass phase transition. It is also shown that ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{3}$ still maintains a dependence on the replicon ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{\mathrm{AT}}$, although in a more complicated way as compared with the case without random fields. These results are discussed in view of recent observations in the ${\mathrm{LiHo}}_{x}{\mathrm{Y}}_{1\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{F}}_{4}$ compound.
The performance of quantum annealing for combinatorial optimization is fundamentally limited by the minimum energy gap
Δ encountered at quantum phase transitions. We investigate the scaling of
Δ with system size
N for two paradigmatic quantum spin-glass models: the two-dimensional Edwards-Anderson (2D-EA) and the all-to-all Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) models. Utilizing a newly proposed unbiased energy-gap estimator for continuous-time projection quantum Monte Carlo simulations, complemented by high-performance sparse eigenvalue solvers, we characterize the gap distributions across disorder realizations. It is found that, in the 2D-EA case, the inverse-gap distribution develops a fat tail with infinite variance as
N increases. This indicates that the unfavorable super-algebraic scaling of
Δ, recently reported for binary couplings [Nature 631, 749 (2024)], persists for the Gaussian disorder considered here, pointing to a universal feature of 2D spin glasses. Conversely, the SK model retains a finite-variance distribution, with the disorder-averaged gap following a rather slow power law, close to
Δ∝N−1/3. This finding provides a promising outlook for the potential efficiency of quantum annealers for optimization problems with dense connectivity.
We study the ±J transverse-field Ising spin-glass model at zero temperature on d-dimensional hypercubic lattices and in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model, by series expansions around the strong-field limit. In the SK model and in high dimensions our calculated critical properties are in excellent agreement with the exact mean-field results, surprisingly even down to dimension d=6, which is below the upper critical dimension of d=8. In contrast, at lower dimensions we find a rich singular behavior consisting of critical and Griffiths-McCoy singularities. The divergence of the equal-time structure factor allows us to locate the critical coupling where the correlation length diverges, implying the onset of a thermodynamic phase transition. We find that the spin-glass susceptibility as well as various power moments of the local susceptibility become singular in the paramagnetic phase before the critical point. Griffiths-McCoy singularities are very strong in two dimensions but decrease rapidly as the dimension increases. We present evidence that high enough powers of the local susceptibility may become singular at the pure-system critical point.
We study effects of random fluctuations in quantum spin-glass systems. We show that the expression of the magnetic susceptibility is divided into the classical and quantum parts. The former can be analyzed by the standard replica method with the static approximation. The latter incorporates dynamical correlations and is determined by the energy gap distribution. By using the many-body interacting Ising spin-glass model with transverse field, we discuss possible mechanisms of the quantum phase transitions.