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arXiv:1512.00760 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Nonequilibrium and nonhomogeneous phenomena around a first-order quantum phase transition

Lorenzo Del Re, Michele Fabrizio, Erio Tosatti

Published Mar 21, 2016• 19 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We consider nonequilibrium phenomena in a very simple model that displays a zero-temperature first-order phase transition. The quantum Ising model with a four-spin exchange is adopted as a general representative of first-order quantum phase transitions that belong to the Ising universality class, such as for instance the order-disorder ferroelectric transitions, and possibly first-order $T=0$ Mott transitions. In particular, we address quantum quenches in the exactly solvable limit of infinite connectivity and show that, within the coexistence region around the transition, the system can remain trapped in a metastable phase, as long as it is spatially homogeneous so that nucleation can be ignored. Motivated by the physics of nucleation, we then study in the same model static but inhomogeneous phenomena that take place at surfaces and interfaces. The first-order nature implies that both phases remain locally stable across the transition, and with that the possibility of a metastable wetting layer showing up at the surface of the stable phase, even at $T=0$. We use mean-field theory plus quantum fluctuations in the harmonic approximation to study quantum surface wetting.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.93.125131

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cond-mat.stat-mechCross-listedarXiv:2512.17333•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Dec 22, 2025•1 citation
We consider nonequilibrium phenomena in a very simple model that displays a zero-temperature first-order phase transition. The quantum Ising model with a four-spin exchange is adopted as a general representative of first-order quantum phase transitions that belong to the Ising universality class, such as for instance the order-disorder ferroelectric transitions, and possibly first-order T=0T=0T=0 Mott transitions. In particular, we address quantum quenches in the exactly solvable limit of infinite connectivity and show that, within the coexistence region around the transition, the system can remain trapped in a metastable phase, as long as it is spatially homogeneous so that nucleation can be ignored. Motivated by the physics of nucleation, we then study in the same model static but inhomogeneous phenomena that take place at surfaces and interfaces. The first-order nature implies that both phases remain locally stable across the transition, and with that the possibility of a metastable wetting layer showing up at the surface of the stable phase, even at T=0T=0T=0. We use mean-field theory plus quantum fluctuations in the harmonic approximation to study quantum surface wetting.
We investigate the dissipative dynamics yielded by the Lindblad equation within the coexistence region around a first-order phase transition. In particular, we consider an exactly solvable, fully connected quantum Ising model with nnn-spin exchange (n>2n>2n>2)---the prototype of quantum first-order phase transitions---and several variants of the Lindblad equations. We show that physically sound results, including exotic nonequilibrium phenomena such as the Mpemba effect, can be obtained only when the Lindblad equation involves jump operators defined for each of the coexisting phases, whether stable or metastable.
We apply a recently developed theory for metastability in open quantum systems to a one-dimensional dissipative quantum Ising model. Earlier results suggest this model features either a nonequilibrium phase transition or a smooth but sharp crossover, where the stationary state changes from paramagnetic to ferromagnetic, accompanied by strongly intermittent emission dynamics characteristic of first-order coexistence between dynamical phases. We show that for a range of parameters close to this transition or crossover point the dynamics of the finite system displays pronounced metastability, i.e., the system relaxes first to long-lived metastable states before eventual relaxation to the true stationary state. From the spectral properties of the quantum master operator we characterize the low-dimensional manifold of metastable states, which are shown to be probability mixtures of two, paramagnetic and ferromagnetic, metastable phases. We also show that for long times the dynamics can be approximated by a classical stochastic dynamics between the metastable phases that is directly related to the intermittent dynamics observed in quantum trajectories and thus the dynamical phases.
We investigate the critical behavior, both in space and time, of the wetting interface within the coexistence region around the first-order phase transition of a fully connected quantum Ising model in slab geometry. For that, we employ the Lindblad master equation formalism in which temperature is inherited by the coupling to a dissipative bath, rather than being a functional parameter as in the conventional Cahn's free energy. Lindblad's approach gives not only access to the dissipative dynamics and steady-state configuration of the quantum wetting interface throughout the whole phase diagram but also shows that the wetting critical behavior can be successfully exploited to characterize the phase diagram as an alternative to the direct evaluation of the free energies of the competing phases.
Long-range interacting spin systems are ubiquitous in physics and exhibit a variety of ground-state disorder-to-order phase transitions. We consider a prototype of infinite-range interacting models known as the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model describing the collective interaction of N spins and investigate the dynamical properties of fluctuations and correlations after a sudden quench of the Hamiltonian. Specifically, we focus on critical quenches, where the initial state and/or the postquench Hamiltonian are critical. Depending on the type of quench, we identify three distinct behaviors where both the short-time dynamics and the stationary state at long times are effectively thermal, quantum, and genuinely nonequilibrium, characterized by distinct universality classes and static and dynamical critical exponents. These behaviors can be identified by an infrared effective temperature that is finite, zero, and infinite (the latter scaling with the system size as N^{1/3}), respectively. The quench dynamics is studied through a combination of exact numerics and analytical calculations utilizing the nonequilibrium Keldysh field theory. Our results are amenable to realization in experiments with trapped-ion experiments where long-range interactions naturally arise.
Zero-temperature or quantum phase transitions in itinerant electronic systems both with and without quenched disordered are discussed. Phase transitions considered include, the ferromagnetic transition, the antiferromagnetic transition, the superconductor-metal transition, and various metal-insulator transitions. Emphasis is placed on how to determine the universal properties that characterize these quantum phase transitions. For the first three of the phase transitions listed above, one of the main physical ideas established is that in zero-temperature systems there are soft or slow modes that exist in addition to the soft order parameter fluctuations, and that these modes can couple to the critical modes. These extra soft modes are shown to have a profound effect on the quantum critical properties. For quantum phase transitions involving zero wavenumber order parameters, i.e., the ferromagnetic and superconductor-metal transitions, these extra modes effectively lead to long-ranged effective interactions between order parameter fluctuations, which in turn lead to exactly soluble critical behaviors. For the antiferromagnetic case, we argue that while in low enough dimensions disorder fluctuation effects tend to destroy long-range order, quantum fluctuations counteract this effect and in some parameter regions manage to re-establish antiferromagnetic long-range order. For the metal-insulator transition, some recent new ideas are reviewed. In particular, it is pointed out that for interacting disordered electrons, one expects that in high dimensions the metal-insulator transition is related to the phase transition that occurs in random-field magnets in high dimensions. If the analogy also holds in three dimensions this suggests that the metal-insulator transition might have glassy characteristics.
We investigate the quantum dynamics generated by quantum quenches (QQs) of the Hamiltonian parameters in many-body systems, focusing on protocols that cross first-order and continuous quantum transitions, both in finite-size systems and in the thermodynamic limit. As a paradigmatic example, we consider the quantum Ising chain in the presence of homogeneous transverse (ggg) and longitudinal (hhh) magnetic fields. This model exhibits a continuous quantum transition (CQT) at g=gcg=g_cg=gc​ and h=0h=0h=0, and first-order quantum transitions (FOQTs) driven by hhh along the line h=0h=0h=0 (g<gcg<g_cg<gc​). In the integrable limit h=0h=0h=0, the system can be mapped onto a quadratic fermionic theory; however, any nonvanishing longitudinal field breaks integrability and the spectrum of the resulting Hamiltonian is generally expected to enter a chaotic regime. We analyze QQs in which the longitudinal field is suddenly changed from a negative value hi<0h_i < 0hi​<0 to a positive value hf>0h_f>0hf​>0. We focus on values of hfh_fhf​ such that the spectrum of the post-QQ Hamiltonian H(g,hf)H(g,h_f)H(g,hf​) lies in the chaotic regime, where thermalization may emerge at asymptotically long times. We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics for different values of ggg, finding qualitatively distinct behaviors for g>gcg > g_cg>gc​ (where the chain is in the disordered phase), for g=gcg = g_cg=gc​ (QQ across the CQT), and for g<gcg<g_cg<gc​ (QQ across the FOQT line).