We review quantum phase transitions of spin systems in transverse magnetic fields taking the examples of the spin-1/2 Ising and XY models in a transverse field. Beginning with an overview of quantum phase transitions, we introduce a number of model Hamiltonians. We provide exact solutions in one spatial dimension connecting them to conformal field theoretical studies. We also discuss Kitaev models and some other exactly solvable spin systems. Studies of quantum phase transitions in the presence of quenched randomness and with frustrating interactions are presented in detail. We discuss novel phenomena like Griffiths-McCoy singularities. We then turn to more recent topics like information theoretic measures of the quantum phase transitions in these models such as concurrence, entanglement entropy, quantum discord and quantum fidelity. We then focus on non-equilibrium dynamics of a variety of transverse field systems across quantum critical points and lines. After mentioning rapid quenching studies, we dwell on slow dynamics and discuss the Kibble-Zurek scaling for the defect density following a quench across critical points and its modifications for quenching across critical lines, gapless regions and multicritical points. Topics like the role of different quenching schemes, local quenching, quenching of models with random interactions and quenching of a spin chain coupled to a heat bath are touched upon. The connection between non-equilibrium dynamics and quantum information theoretic measures is presented at some length. We indicate the connection between Kibble-Zurek scaling and adiabatic evolution of a state as well as the application of adiabatic dynamics as a tool of a quantum optimization technique known as quantum annealing. The final section is dedicated to a detailed discussion on recent experimental studies of transverse Ising-like systems.
We review quantum phase transitions of spin systems in transverse magnetic fields taking the examples of the spin-1/2 Ising and XY models in a transverse field. Beginning with an overview of quantum phase transitions, we introduce a number of model Hamiltonians. We provide exact solutions in one spatial dimension connecting them to conformal field theoretical studies. We also discuss Kitaev models and some other exactly solvable spin systems. Studies of quantum phase transitions in the presence of quenched randomness and with frustrating interactions are presented in detail. We discuss novel phenomena like Griffiths-McCoy singularities. We then turn to more recent topics like information theoretic measures of the quantum phase transitions in these models such as concurrence, entanglement entropy, quantum discord and quantum fidelity. We then focus on non-equilibrium dynamics of a variety of transverse field systems across quantum critical points and lines. After mentioning rapid quenching studies, we dwell on slow dynamics and discuss the Kibble-Zurek scaling for the defect density following a quench across critical points and its modifications for quenching across critical lines, gapless regions and multicritical points. Topics like the role of different quenching schemes, local quenching, quenching of models with random interactions and quenching of a spin chain coupled to a heat bath are touched upon. The connection between non-equilibrium dynamics and quantum information theoretic measures is presented at some length. We indicate the connection between Kibble-Zurek scaling and adiabatic evolution of a state as well as the application of adiabatic dynamics as a tool of a quantum optimization technique known as quantum annealing. The final section is dedicated to a detailed discussion on recent experimental studies of transverse Ising-like systems.
The transverse field Ising and XY models (the simplest quantum spin models) provide the organising principle for the rich variety of interconnected subjects which are covered in this book. From a generic introduction to in-depth discussions of the subtleties of the transverse field Ising and related models, it includes the essentials of quantum dynamics and quantum information. A wide range of relevant topics has also been provided: quantum phase transitions, various measures of quantum information, the effects of disorder and frustration, quenching dynamics and the Kibble–Zurek scaling relation, the Kitaev model, topological phases of quantum systems, and bosonisation. In addition, it also discusses the experimental studies of transverse field models (including the first experimental realisation of quantum annealing) and the recent realisation of the transverse field Ising model using tunable Josephson junctions. Further, it points to the obstacles still remaining to develop a successful quantum computer.
In this book, we have discussed quantum phase transitions in transverse field Ising and XY models in one and higher dimensions, particularly in the context of quantum information processing and non-equilibrium dynamics. We have illustrated how these models relate to actual quantum annealing protocols in physical systems and their connection to efficient quantum computation. Quantum phase transitions for pure models as well as for models with random interactions or random fields have also been considered. These models were introduced in the early 1960's in the context of order-disorder ferroelectric systems. This book focuses on the salient issues for which these models continue to be important and interesting even fifty years after their first appearance. Our starting point involved generic theories of behavior of information theoretic measures, which were then illustrated using the transverse field models. Related models, e.g. those which are exactly soluble using Jordan-Wigner transformations and those exhibiting topological quantum phase transitions, were presented in the book at some length. These models are relevant to low-dimensional condensed matter physics as well as to quantum information and quantum dynamical studies. On the theoretical side, the integrability of the transverse field Ising/ XY models in one dimension has provided an ideal testing ground for field theoretical and information theoretical studies. Numerous predictions of theoretical studies have been verified experimentally in recent years. [180]. The one-dimensional version of these models have been extremely useful in studying information theoretic measures like concurrence, entanglement entropy, fidelity and fidelity susceptibility, and also the scaling of the defect density generated by quantum critical and multicritical quenches, namely, the Kibble–Zurek scaling. These models have played a crucial role in the development of quantum annealing techniques and adiabatic quantum algorithms. The equilibration or thermalization following quantum quenches have been studied using variants of transverse field models. An advantageous feature of transverse field Ising models is the quantum-classical mapping which renders these models ideally suited for quantum Monte Carlo studies for d > 1.
Quantum Ising model in one dimension is an exactly solvable example of a quantum phase transition. We investigate its behavior during a quench caused by a gradual turning off of the transverse bias field. The system is then driven at a fixed rate characterized by the quench time ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{Q}$ across the critical point from a paramagnetic to ferromagnetic phase. In agreement with Kibble-Zurek mechanism (which recognizes that evolution is approximately adiabatic far away, but becomes approximately impulse sufficiently near the critical point), quantum state of the system after the transition exhibits a characteristic correlation length $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$ proportional to the square root of the quench time ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{Q}$: $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}=\sqrt{{\ensuremath{\tau}}_{Q}}$. The inverse of this correlation length is known to determine average density of defects (e.g., kinks) after the transition. In this paper, we show that this same $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$ controls the entropy of entanglement, e.g., entropy of a block of L spins that are entangled with the rest of the system after the transition from the paramagnetic ground state induced by the quench. For large L, this entropy saturates at $\frac{1}{6}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{log}}_{2}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$, as might have been expected from the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. Close to the critical point, the entropy saturates when the block size $L\ensuremath{\approx}\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$, but---in the subsequent evolution in the ferromagnetic phase---a somewhat larger length scale $l=\sqrt{{\ensuremath{\tau}}_{Q}}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ln}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}_{Q}$ develops as a result of a dephasing process that can be regarded as a quantum analog of phase ordering, and the entropy saturates when $L\ensuremath{\approx}l$. We also study the spin-spin correlation using both analytic methods and real time simulations with the Vidal algorithm. We find that at an instant when quench is crossing the critical point, ferromagnetic correlations decay exponentially with the dynamical correlation length $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$, but (as for entropy of entanglement) in the following evolution length scale l gradually develops. The correlation function becomes oscillatory at distances less than this scale. However, both the wavelength and the correlation length of these oscillations are still determined by $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\xi}}$. We also derive probability distribution for the number of kinks in a finite spin chain after the transition.
We study the quantum dynamics of a one-dimensional spin-21 anisotropic XY model in a transverse field when the transverse field or the anisotropic interaction is quenched at a slow but uniform rate. The two quenching schemes are called transverse and anisotropic quenching, respectively. Our emphasis in this paper is on the anisotropic quenching scheme, and we compare the results with those of the other scheme. In the process of anisotropic quenching, the system crosses all the quantum critical lines of the phase diagram where the relaxation time diverges. The evolution is nonadiabatic in the time interval when the parameters are close to their critical values, and is adiabatic otherwise. The density of defects produced due to nonadiabatic transitions is calculated by mapping the many-particle system to an equivalent Landau-Zener problem and is generally found to vary as $1∕\sqrt{\ensuremath{\tau}}$, where $\ensuremath{\tau}$ is the characteristic time scale of quenching, a scenario that supports the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. Interestingly, in the case of anisotropic quenching, there exists an additional nonadiabatic transition, in comparison to the transverse quenching case, with the corresponding probability peaking at an incommensurate value of the wave vector. In the special case in which the system passes through a multicritical point, the defect density is found to vary as $1∕{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{1∕6}$. The von Neumann entropy of the final state is shown to maximize at a quenching rate around which the ordering of the final state changes from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic.
Phase transitions and their associated critical phenomena are of fundamental importance and play a crucial role in the development of statistical physics for both classical and quantum systems. Phase transitions embody diverse aspects of physics and also have numerous applications outside physics, e.g., in chemistry, biology, and combinatorial optimization problems in computer science. Many problems can be reduced to a system consisting of a large number of interacting agents, which under some circumstances (e.g., changes of external parameters) exhibit collective behavior; this type of scenario also underlies phase transitions. The theoretical understanding of equilibrium phase transitions was put on a solid footing with the establishment of the renormalization group. In contrast, non-equilibrium phase transition are relatively less understood and currently a very active research topic. One important milestone here is the Kibble-Zurek (KZ) mechanism, which provides a useful framework for describing a system with a transition point approached through a non-equilibrium quench process. I developed two efficient Monte Carlo techniques for studying phase transitions, one is for classical phase transition and the other is for quantum phase transitions, both are under the framework of KZ scaling. For classical phase transition, I develop a non-equilibrium quench (NEQ) simulation that can completely avoid the critical slowing down problem. For quantum phase transitions, I develop a new algorithm, named quasi-adiabatic quantum Monte Carlo (QAQMC) algorithm for studying quantum quenches. I demonstrate the utility of QAQMC quantum Ising model and obtain high-precision results at the transition point, in particular showing generalized dynamic scaling in the quantum system. To further extend the methods, I study more complex systems such as spin-glasses and random graphs. The techniques allow us to investigate the problems efficiently. From the classical perspective, using the NEQ approach I verify the universality class of the 3D Ising spin-glasses. I also investigate the random 3-regular graphs in terms of both classical and quantum phase transitions. I demonstrate that under this simulation scheme, one can extract information associated with the classical and quantum spin-glass transitions without any knowledge prior to the simulation.
Abstract We show that the symmetry-breaking gap of the quantum Ising model in the transverse field can be extracted from free evolution of the longitudinal magnetization taking place after a gradual quench of the magnetic field. We perform for this purpose numerical simulations of the Ising chains with either periodic or open boundaries. We also study the condition for adiabaticity of evolution of the longitudinal magnetization finding excellent agreement between our simulations and the prediction based on the Kibble–Zurek theory of non-equilibrium phase transitions. Our results should be relevant for ongoing cold atom and ion experiments targeting either equilibrium or dynamical aspects of quantum phase transitions. They could be also useful for benchmarking D-Wave machines.