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arXiv:1408.1412

Classical nature of ordered phases: origin of spontaneous symmetry breaking

Marco Cianciaruso, Ferro, L., S. M. Giampaolo, Giuseppe Zonzo, Fabrizio Illuminati

Published Aug 6, 2014• 2 citations
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Abstract

We investigate the nature of spontaneous symmetry breaking in complex quantum systems by conjecturing that the maximally symmetry breaking quantum ground states are the most classical ones corresponding to an ordered phase. We make this argument quantitatively precise by showing that the ground states which realize the maximum breaking of the Hamiltonian symmetries are the only ones that: I) are always locally convertible, i.e. can be obtained from all other ground states by local operations and classical communication, while the reverse is never possible; II) minimize the monogamy inequality for bipartite entanglement; III) minimize quantum correlations, as measured by the quantum discord, for all pairs of dynamical variables and are the only ground states for which the pairwise quantum correlations vanish asymptotically with the intra-pair distance.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1408.1412

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We investigate the nature of spontaneous symmetry breaking in complex quantum systems by conjecturing that the maximally symmetry breaking quantum ground states are the most classical ones corresponding to an ordered phase. We make this argument quantitatively precise by showing that the ground states which realize the maximum breaking of the Hamiltonian symmetries are the only ones that: I) are always locally convertible, i.e. can be obtained from all other ground states by local operations and classical communication, while the reverse is never possible; II) minimize the monogamy inequality for bipartite entanglement; III) minimize quantum correlations, as measured by the quantum discord, for all pairs of dynamical variables and are the only ground states for which the pairwise quantum correlations vanish asymptotically with the intra-pair distance.
We analyse the nature of spontaneous symmetry breaking in complex quantum systems by investigating the long-standing conjecture that the maximally symmetry-breaking quantum ground states are the most classical ones corresponding to a globally ordered phase. We make this argument quantitatively precise by comparing different local and global indicators of classicality and quantumness, respectively in symmetry-breaking and symmetry-preserving quantum ground states. We first discuss how naively comparing local, pairwise entanglement and discord apparently leads to the opposite conclusion. Indeed, we show that in symmetry-preserving ground states the two-body entanglement captures only a modest portion of the total two-body quantum correlations, while, on the contrary, in maximally symmetry-breaking ground states it contributes the largest amount to the total two-body quantum correlations. We then put to test the conjecture by looking at the global, macroscopic correlation properties of quantum ground states. We prove that the ground states which realize the maximum breaking of the Hamiltonian symmetries, associated to a globally ordered phase, are the only ones that: I) are always locally convertible, i.e. can be obtained from all other ground states by only applying LOCC transformations (local operations and classical communication), while the reverse is never possible; II) minimize the monogamy inequality on the globally shared, macroscopic bipartite entanglement.
We show that the metastable, symmetry-breaking ground states of quantum many-body Hamiltonians have vanishing quantum mutual information between macroscopically separated regions and are thus the most classical ones among all possible quantum ground states. This statement is obvious only when the symmetry-breaking ground states are simple product states, e.g., at the factorization point. On the other hand, symmetry-breaking states are in general entangled along the entire ordered phase, and to show that they actually feature the least macroscopic correlations compared to their symmetric superpositions is highly nontrivial. We prove this result in general, by considering the quantum mutual information based on the two-R\'enyi entanglement entropy and using a locality result stemming from quasiadiabatic continuation. Moreover, in the paradigmatic case of the exactly solvable one-dimensional quantum XYXYXY model, we further verify the general result by considering also the quantum mutual information based on the von Neumann entanglement entropy.
The ground state of a quantum spin chain is a natural playground for investigating correlations. Nevertheless, not all correlations are genuinely of quantum nature. Here we review the recent progress to quantify the "quantumness" of the correlations throughout the phase diagram of quantum spin systems. Focusing to one spatial dimension, we discuss the behavior of quantum discord (QD) close to quantum phase transitions (QPT). In contrast to the two-spin entanglement, pairwise discord is effectively long-ranged in critical regimes. Besides the features of QPT, QD is especially feasible to explore the factorization phenomenon, giving rise to nontrivial ground classical states in quantum systems. The effects of spontaneous symmetry breaking are also discussed as well as the identification of quantum critical points through correlation witnesses.
The nature of quantum correlations in strongly correlated systems has been a subject of intense research. In particular, it has been realized that entanglement and quantum discord are present at quantum phase transitions and are able to characterize them. Surprisingly, it has been shown for a number of different systems that qubit pairwise states, even when highly entangled, do not violate Bell's inequalities, being in this sense local. Here we show that such a local character of quantum correlations traces back to the the monogamy trade-off obeyed by bipartite Bell correlations, being in fact general for translation invariant systems. We illustrate this result in a quantum spin chain with a soft breaking of translation symmetry. In addition, we provide an extension of the monogamy inequality to the N -qubit scenario, showing that the bound increases with N and providing examples of its saturation through uniformly generated random pure states.
In the presence of interactions with the environment, decoherence selects stable classical states, the pointer states, while suppressing arbitrary macroscopic coherent superpositions. In close analogy, the metastable symmetry-breaking ground states of many-body Hamiltonians should be the ones with the least macroscopic entanglement and thus the most classical ones among all possible quantum ground states. By considering the mutual information based on the 2-Renyi entanglement entropy and using a locality result, we show that symmetry-breaking states have the least macroscopic entanglement and, consequently, that they are the ones selected in real world by environmental decoherence.
Abstract Spontaneous symmetry breaking is related to the appearance of emergent phenomena, while a non-vanishing order parameter has been viewed as the sign of turning into such symmetry-breaking phase. We study the spontaneous symmetry breaking in the conventional superconductor and Bose–Einstein condensation with a continuous measure of symmetry by showing that both the many-body systems can be mapped into the many spin model. We also formulate the underlying relation between the spontaneous symmetry breaking and the order parameter quantitatively. The degree of symmetry stays unity in the absence of the two emergent phenomena, while decreases exponentially at the appearance of the order parameter which indicates the inextricable relation between the spontaneous symmetry and the order parameter.