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arXiv:1603.00451

Two classes of organization principle: quantum/topological phase transitions meet complete/in-complete devil staircases and their experimental realizations

Fadi Sun, Jinwu Ye

Published Mar 1, 2016• 2 citations
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Abstract

There exists many quantum or topological phases in Nature. One well known organization principle is through various quantum or topological phases transitions between or among these phases. Another is through either complete or in-complete devil staircases in their quantized forms. Here, we show that both classes of organization principle appear in an experimentally accessible system: strongly interacting spinor bosons subject to any of the linear combinations of the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in the space of the two SOC parameters $ ( α, β) $ in a square lattice. In the strong coupling limit, it leads to a new quantum spin model called Rotated Ferromagnetic Heisenberg model (RFHM). The RFHM leads to rich and unconventional magnetic phases even in a bipartite lattice. For the first class, by identifying a suitable low energy mode, we investigate a new quantum Lifshitz transition from the Y-x to the IC-SkX-y phase. For the second class, we introduce the topological rational and irrational winding numbers $ W $ to characterize the incomplete or complete devil staircases and also perform their quantizations. The IC-YZ-x/LQx phases form a Cantor set with a fractal dimension along the complete devil staircase. They also take most of measures in the incomplete devil staircases when $ β\ll α$. Quantum chaos and quantum information scramblings along the diagonal line $ α=β$ are discussed. Implications on un-conventional magnetic ordered phases detected in the 4d- or 5d-orbital strongly correlated materials with SOC and in the current or near future cold atom systems are presented.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1603.00451

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There exists many quantum or topological phases in Nature. One well known organization principle is through various quantum or topological phases transitions between or among these phases. Another is through either complete or in-complete devil staircases in their quantized forms. Here, we show that both classes of organization principle appear in an experimentally accessible system: strongly interacting spinor bosons subject to any of the linear combinations of the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in the space of the two SOC parameters (α,β)( α, β)(α,β) in a square lattice. In the strong coupling limit, it leads to a new quantum spin model called Rotated Ferromagnetic Heisenberg model (RFHM). The RFHM leads to rich and unconventional magnetic phases even in a bipartite lattice. For the first class, by identifying a suitable low energy mode, we investigate a new quantum Lifshitz transition from the Y-x to the IC-SkX-y phase. For the second class, we introduce the topological rational and irrational winding numbers WWW to characterize the incomplete or complete devil staircases and also perform their quantizations. The IC-YZ-x/LQx phases form a Cantor set with a fractal dimension along the complete devil staircase. They also take most of measures in the incomplete devil staircases when β≪α β\ll αβ≪α. Quantum chaos and quantum information scramblings along the diagonal line α=β α=βα=β are discussed. Implications on un-conventional magnetic ordered phases detected in the 4d- or 5d-orbital strongly correlated materials with SOC and in the current or near future cold atom systems are presented.
In this advance, we study the system of strongly interacting spinor bosons in a square lattice subject to any of the linear combinations of the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling (SOC). The SOC leads to novel and rich quantum and topological phenomena in a lattice system. They include masses generated from order from quantum disorder mechanism, collinear spin-bond correlated magnetic phase, quantum commensurate ( C ) and In-commensurate ( IC ) non-coplanar Skyrmion crystal phases, stripe co-planar ( spiral ) C and IC phases, quantum Lifshitz C-IC transitions, metastable states, hysteresis, topological rational and irrational winding numbers, incomplete and complete devil staircases, Cantor sets, multi-fractals, etc. Various perspectives and possible intimate connections with topological spin liquids due to geometric frustrations or quantum spin glass due to quenched disorders are discussed. Implications on current or near future cold atom systems and on 4d or 5d strongly correlated materials with SOC are discussed.
In a previous work, we derived a Rotated Ferromagnetic Heisenberg model (RFHM) to describe quantum magnetic phenomena of spinor bosons loaded in optical lattices in the presence of spin-orbit coupling (SOC). In this paper, we study the RFHM at a special equivalent class in a Zeeman field. We find that the interplay of the Zeeman field and the SOC on a lattice leads to rich and new quantum phases through new universality class of quantum phase transitions. These quantum phases include two collinear states at low and high Zeeman field, two co-planar canted states at two dual related SOC strengths respectively, also a non-coplanar incommensurate Skyrmion (IC-SkX) crystal phases surrounded by the 4 phases. The IC-SkX state reduces to a commensurate SkX state with a 2X4 spin-orbital structure at a special commensurate value of the SOC. We determine the orbital and spin structures and the novel excitation spectra of all the quantum phases. We also explore new universality classes of quantum phase transitions between (among) these phases with the dynamic exponents z=1, z=2 and the anisotropic one (zx=1z_x = 1zx​=1, zy=3z_y = 3zy​=3) and finite temperature transitions above all these phases. Experimental implementations and various experimental detections of these new phenomena are also discussed. Possible implications to condensed matter systems with or without SOC are given.
We construct a two-dimensional microscopic model of interacting quantum dimers that displays an infinite number of periodic striped phases in its T=0T=0T=0 phase diagram. The phases form an incomplete devil's staircase and the period becomes arbitrarily large as the staircase is traversed. The Hamiltonian has purely short-range interactions, does not break any symmetries of the underlying square lattice, and is generic in that it does not involve the fine-tuning of a large number of parameters. Our model, a quantum mechanical analog of the Pokrovsky-Talapov model of fluctuating domain walls in two-dimensional classical statistical mechanics, provides a mechanism by which striped phases with large periods compared to the lattice spacing can, in principle, form in frustrated quantum magnetic systems with only short-ranged interactions and no explicitly broken symmetries.
We study possible many body phenomena in the Quantum Anomalous Hall system of weakly interacting spinor bosons in a square lattice. There are various novel spin-bond correlated superfluids (SF) and quantum or topological phase transitions among these SF phases. One transition is a first order one driven by roton droppings ( but with non-zero gaps $ Δ_R $ ) tuned by the Zeeman field $ h $. Another is a second order bosonic Lifshitz transition with the dynamic exponents $ z_x=z_y=2 $ and an accompanying $ [C_4 \times C_4]_D $ symmetry breaking. It is driven by the softening of the superfluid Goldstone mode tuned by the ratio of spin-orbit coupled (SOC) strength over the hopping strength. The two phase boundaries meet at a topological tri-critical (TT) point which separates the $ h=0 $ line into two SF phases with $ N=2 $ and $ N=4 $ condensation momenta respectively. At the $ h=0 $ line where the system has an anti-unitary $ Z_2 $ Reflection symmetry, there are infinite number of classically degenerate family of states on both sides. We perform a systematic order from quantum disorder analysis to find the quantum ground states, also calculate the roton gaps $ Δ_R $ generated by the order from disorder mechanism on both sides of the TT point. The $ N=2 $ and $ N=4 $ SF phases have the same spin-orbital XY-AFM spin structure, respect the anti-unitary symmetry and break the $ [C_4 \times C_4]_D $ symmetry, so they be distinguished only by the different topology of the BEC condensation momenta instead of by any differences in the symmetry breaking patterns. All these novel quantum or topological phenomena can be probed in the recent experimentally realized weakly interacting Quantum Anomalous Hall (QAH) model of $ ^87 Rb $ by Wu, {\sl et.al}, Science 354, 83-88 (2016).
We study the system of strongly interacting spinor bosons in a square lattice subject to the isotropic Rashba SOC $ α=β$. It supports collinear spin-bond correlated magnetic Y-x phase, a gapped in-commensurate (IC-) co-planar IC-XY-y phase, a non-coplanar commensurate (C-) $ 3 \times 3 $ Skyrmion crystal phase (SkX). The state at the Abelian point $ α=β=π/2 $ is just an AFM state in a rotated basis. Slightly away from the point, we identify a spurious $ U(1) $ symmetry, develop a novel and non-perturbative method to calculate not only the gap, but also the excitation spectrum due to the order from quantum disorder (OFQD) mechanism. We construct a symmetry based effective action to investigate the quantum Lifshitz transition from the Y-x state to the IC-XY-y state and establish the connection between the phenomenological parameters in the effective action and those evaluated by the microscopic non-perturbative OFQD analysis in the large $ S $ limits. Experimental implications on cold atoms and some 4d or 5d Kitaev materials are discussed.
We show that a hierarchy of topological phases in one dimension-a topological Devil's staircase-can emerge at fractional filling fractions in interacting systems, whose single-particle band structure describes a topological or a crystalline topological insulator. Focusing on a specific example in the BDI class, we present a field-theoretical argument based on bosonization that indicates how the system, as a function of the filling fraction, hosts a series of density waves. Subsequently, based on a numerical investigation of the low-lying energy spectrum, Wilczek-Zee phases, and entanglement spectra, we show that they are symmetry protected topological phases. In sharp contrast to the non-interacting limit, these topological density waves do not follow the bulk-edge correspondence, as their edge modes are gapped. We then discuss how these results are immediately applicable to models in the AIII class, and to crystalline topological insulators protected by inversion symmetry. Our findings are immediately relevant to cold atom experiments with alkaline-earth atoms in optical lattices, where the band structure properties we exploit have been recently realized.