A frustrated spin-
1/2 XXZ chain model comprising a ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor coupling with the bond alternation, ${J}_{1}(1\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ensuremath{\delta})<0$, and an antiferromagnetic second-neighbor exchange coupling
J2>0 is studied at zero and weak magnetic fields by means of density-matrix renormalization-group calculations of order parameters, correlation functions, and the entanglement entropy, as well as an Abelian bosonization analysis. At zero magnetic field, the bond alternation $\ensuremath{\delta}>0$ suppresses the gapless phase characterized by a vector-chiral (VC) long-range order (LRO) and a quasi-LRO of an incommensurate spin spiral, whereas this phase occupies a large region in the space of
J1/J2 and the easy-plane exchange anisotropy for $\ensuremath{\delta}=0$ [S. Furukawa et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 257205 (2010)]. Then, four gapped phases are found to appear as the exchange anisotropy varies from the SU(2)-symmetric case to the U(1)-symmetric case: the Haldane dimer (D
+) phase with the same sign of the
x,y- and
z-component dimer order parameters, two VC dimer (VCD
+/VCD${}_{\ensuremath{-}}$) phases with the sign of the
z-component dimer order parameter being unaltered/reversed, and the even-parity dimer (D${}_{\ensuremath{-}}$) phase. At small magnetic fields, a field-induced ring-exchange interaction, which is proportional to a staggered scalar chirality and a magnetic flux penetrating the associated triangle, drives a transition from the D${}_{\ensuremath{-}}$ phase into a VC-Neel-dimer (VCND) phase, but not from the D
+ phase. This VCND phase is stable up to the large magnetic field at which the Zeeman term closes the spin gap. A possible relevance to Rb
2Cu
2Mo
3O
12 is discussed.
The ground-state phase diagram of a spin-
21 XXZ chain with competing ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor (
J1<0) and antiferromagnetic second-neighbor (
J2>0) exchange couplings is studied by means of the infinite time evolving block decimation algorithm and effective field theories. For the SU(2)-symmetric (Heisenberg) case, we show that the nonmagnetic phase in the range $\ensuremath{-}4<{J}_{1}/{J}_{2}<0$ has a small but finite ferromagnetic dimer order. We argue that this spontaneous dimer order is associated with effective spin-1 degrees of freedom on dimerized bonds, which collectively form a valence bond solid state as in the spin-1 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain (the Haldane spin chain). We thus call this phase the Haldane dimer phase. With easy-plane anisotropy, the model exhibits a variety of phases including the vector chiral phase with gapless excitations and the even-parity dimer and N\'eel phases with gapped excitations, in addition to the Haldane dimer phase. Furthermore, we show the existence of gapped phases with coexisting orders in narrow regions that intervene between the gapless chiral phase and any one of Haldane dimer, even-parity dimer, and N\'eel phases. Possible implications for quasi-one-dimensional edge-sharing cuprates are discussed.
We revisit the phase diagram of the dimerized XXZ spin-
21 chain with nearest-neighbor couplings which was studied numerically in Phys. Rev. B 106, L201106 (2022). The model has isotropic
XY couplings which have a uniform value and
ZZ couplings which have a dimerized form, with strengths
Ja and
Jb on alternate bonds. We find a rich phase diagram in the region of positive
Ja, Jb. We provide a detailed understanding of the different phases and associated quantum phase transitions using a combination of mean-field theory, low-energy effective Hamiltonians, renormalization group calculations employing the technique of bosonization, and numerical calculations using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method. The phase diagram consists of two Ising paramagnetic phases called IPM
0 and IPM
π, and a phase with Ising Neel order called IN; all these phases are gapped. The phases IPM
0 and IPM
π are separated by a gapless phase transition line given by
0≤Ja=Jb≤1 which is described by a conformal field theory with central charge
c=1. There are two gapless phase transition lines separating IPM
0 from IN and IPM
π from IN; these are described by conformal field theories with
c=21 corresponding to quantum Ising transitions. The
c=1 line bifurcates into the two
c=21 lines at the point
Ja=Jb=1; the shape of the bifurcation is found analytically using RG calculations. A symmetry analysis shows that IPM
0 is a topologically trivial phase while IPM
π is a time-reversal symmetry-protected topological phase (SPT) with spin-
21 states at the two ends of an open system. The numerical results obtained by the DMRG method are in good agreement with the analytical results. Finally we propose experimental platforms for testing our results.
Effective field theory is a very useful technique for understanding quantum many body systems. We use this approach to study a certain class of critical quantum spin-1 chains and symmetry protected topological phases of matter in two spatial dimensions. In the first context we consider the SU(3) symmetric spin-1 chain with additional interactions. We use bosonization to demonstrate that the effective field theories describing the critical behaviour of these spin chains can be mapped to free compact boson conformal field theories (CFTs) with central charge c=2. We also describe how some predictions from field theory can be verified in numerical calculations using exact diagonalization (ED) and the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm. In particular, the bosonization method gives a formula for the evolution of four Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) parameters as a function of the lattice parameters. Using the analytic formulae for the scaling dimensions in terms of the TLL parameters and matching of lowest scaling dimensions, we numerically calculate these field-theoretic parameters and confirm that their evolution agrees with the prediction using bosonization. We also tackle aspects of the challenging problem of understanding interacting topological phases. In this context, we aim to understand the effects if interactions in certain classes of symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases of matter. We consider non-chiral SPT phases in two spatial dimensions protected by a discrete symmetry such as Z_K or Z_K x Z_K symmetry. We argue that modular invariance/noninvariance of the partition function of the one-dimensional edge theory can be used to diagnose whether, by adding a suitable potential, the edge theory can be gapped or not without breaking the symmetry. By taking bosonic phases described by Chern-Simons K-matrix theories and fermionic phases relevant to topological superconductors as examples, we demonstrate explicitly that when modular invariance is achieved, we can construct an interaction potential that is consistent with the symmetry and can completely gap out the edge. We also briefly discuss preliminary results of a numerical approach for simulating the 3 dimensional Landau Level problem. This includes a brief description of a potential application of variational Monte Carlo to spin-orbit coupled ab initio systems.
We study different phases of the one-dimensional bond-alternating spin-
1/2 Heisenberg model by using the symmetry fractionalization mechanism. We employ the infinite matrix-product state representation of the ground state (through the infinite-size density matrix renormalization group algorithm) to obtain inequivalent projective representations of the (unbroken) symmetry groups of the model, which are used to identify the different phases. We find that the model exhibits trivial as well as symmetry-protected topological phases. The symmetry-protected topological phases are Haldane phases on even/odd bonds, which are protected by the time-reversal (acting on the spin as
σ→−σ), parity (permutation of the chain about a specific bond), and dihedral (
π-rotations about a pair of orthogonal axes) symmetries. Additionally, we investigate the phases of the most general two-body bond-alternating spin-
1/2 model, which respects the time-reversal, parity, and dihedral symmetries, and obtain its corresponding twelve different types of the symmetry-protected topological phases.
According to the classification using projective representations of the SO(3) group, there exist two topologically distinct gapped phases in spin-1 chains. The symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase possesses half-integer projective representations of the SO(3) group, while the trivial phase possesses integer linear representations. In the present work, we implement non-Abelian symmetries in the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method, allowing us to keep track of (and also control) the virtual bond representations and to readily distinguish the SPT phase from the trivial one by evaluating the multiplet entanglement spectrum. In particular, using the entropies
SI (
SH) of integer (half-integer) representations, we can define an entanglement gap $G={S}^{I}\ensuremath{-}{S}^{H}$, which equals 1 in the SPT phase, and $\ensuremath{-}1$ in the trivial phase. As an application of our proposal, we study the spin-1 models on various one-dimensional (1D) and quasi-1D lattices, including the bilinear-biquadratic model on a single chain, and the Heisenberg model on a two-leg ladder and a three-leg tube. Among others, we confirm the existence of a SPT phase in the spin-1 tube model and reveal that the phase transition between the SPT and the trivial phase is a continuous one. The transition point is found to be critical, with conformal central charge
c=3 determined by fits to the block entanglement entropy.