Topological quantum matter is typically associated with gapped phases and edge modes protected by the bulk gap. In contrast, recent work (Phys. Rev. B 104, 075132) proposed intrinsically gapless topological phases that, in one dimension, carry protected edge modes only when the bulk is a gapless Luttinger liquid. The edge modes of such a topological Luttinger liquid (TLL) descend from a nonlocal string order that is forbidden in gapped phases and whose precise form depends on the symmetry class of the system. In this work, we propose a powerful and unbiased entanglement-based smoking gun signature of the TLL. In particular, we show that the entanglement entropy profile of a TLL lacks Friedel oscillations that are invariably present in other gapless one dimensional phases such as ordinary Luttinger liquids, and argue that their absence is closely related to a long-ranged string order which is an intrinsic property of the TLL. Crucially, such a diagnostic is more robust against numerical errors and relatively easier to measure in experiments as it relies on the entanglement entropy rather than entanglement spectrum, unlike the entanglement-based diagnostics of gapped topological phases in one dimension.
We present the case where Luttinger liquids are characterized by a form of hidden order which is similar, but distinct in some crucial regards, to the hidden order characterizing spin-1 Heisenberg chains. We construct a string correlator for the Luttinger liquid which is similar to the string correlator constructed by den Nijs and Rommelse for the spin chain. We reanalyze the spin one chain, introducing a precise formulation of the geometrical principle behind the so-called ``squeezed space'' construction, to demonstrate that the physics at long wavelength can be reformulated in terms of a
Z2 gauge theory. Peculiarly, the normal spin chain lives at infinite gauge coupling where it is characterized by deconfinement. We identify the microscopic conditions required for confinement thereby identifying a novel phase of the spin chain. We demonstrate that the Luttinger liquid can be approached in the same general framework. The difference from the spin chain is that the gauge sector is critical in the sense that the Luttinger liquid is at the phase boundary where the
Z2 local symmetry emerges. In addition, the ``matter'' (spin) sector is also critical. We evaluate the string correlator analytically for the strongly coupled Hubbard model and we further demonstrate that the squeezed space structure is still present even in the noninteracting fermion gas. This adds new insights to the meaning of bosonization. These structures are hard wired in the mathematical structure of bosonization and this becomes obvious by considering string correlators. Numerical results are presented for the string correlator using a non-abelian version of the density matrix renormalization group algorithm, confirming in detail the expectations following from the theory. We conclude with some observations regarding the generalization of bosonization to higher dimensions.
We investigate the Zeeman-field-driven quantum phase transitions between singlet spin liquids and algebraically ordered
O(2) nematic spin liquids of spin-one bosons in one-dimensional optical lattices. We find that the critical behavior is characterized by condensation of hardcore bosons instead of ideal magnons in high-dimensional lattices. Critical exponents are strongly renormalized by hardcore interactions and critical states are equivalent to the free Fermion model up to the Friedel oscillations. We also find that the algebraically ordered nematic spin liquids close to critical points are fully characterized by the Luttinger-liquid dynamics with Luttinger-liquid parameters magnetically tunable. The Bethe ansatz solution has been applied to determine the critical magnetization and nematic correlations.