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arXiv:1907.06219 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Ising order parameter and topological phase transitions: Toric code in a uniform magnetic field

Mohammad Hossein Zarei

Published Sep 25, 2019• 18 citations
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Abstract

A quantum Ising model in a transverse field is of the simplest quantum many-body systems used for studying universal properties of quantum phase transitions. Interestingly, it is well known that such phase transitions can be mapped to topological phase transitions in toric code models. Therefore, one can expect that well-known properties of the transverse Ising model are used for characterizing topological phase transitions in toric code models. In this paper, we consider the magnetization of the Ising model and show, while it is a local order parameter, it is mapped to a nonlocal order parameter on the topological side. Consequently, we introduce a string order parameter for topological phase transitions in toric code models defined on different lattices with different dimensions in the presence of a uniform magnetic field. Since such a string order parameter is dual of the Ising order parameter with well-known properties, it leads to a topological (nonlocal) characterization of phase transition in the toric code model in uniform field. Our results show that although topological phase transitions do not follow a symmetry-breaking mechanism, it might still be possible to use concepts of symmetry-breaking phase transitions for topological ones by finding suitable mappings.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.100.125159

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A quantum Ising model in a transverse field is of the simplest quantum many-body systems used for studying universal properties of quantum phase transitions. Interestingly, it is well known that such phase transitions can be mapped to topological phase transitions in toric code models. Therefore, one can expect that well-known properties of the transverse Ising model are used for characterizing topological phase transitions in toric code models. In this paper, we consider the magnetization of the Ising model and show, while it is a local order parameter, it is mapped to a nonlocal order parameter on the topological side. Consequently, we introduce a string order parameter for topological phase transitions in toric code models defined on different lattices with different dimensions in the presence of a uniform magnetic field. Since such a string order parameter is dual of the Ising order parameter with well-known properties, it leads to a topological (nonlocal) characterization of phase transition in the toric code model in uniform field. Our results show that although topological phase transitions do not follow a symmetry-breaking mechanism, it might still be possible to use concepts of symmetry-breaking phase transitions for topological ones by finding suitable mappings.
It has been known that by encoding the Boltzmann weights of a classical Ising model in the amplitudes of the wave function of the ground state of the toric code model, the classical phase transition in Ising model is mapped to a topological phase transition in a perturbed toric code model. Since such topological phase transitions cannot be characterized by any local order parameter, it will be an important challenge to find an order parameter which describes the above topological phase transition. In this paper, using a simple technic based on mapping between classical Ising model and the ground state of the toric code model, we find a non-local order parameter which well reveals the topological nature of the above phase transition. We show that such an order parameter is, in fact, a kind of string order parameter which has been recently introduced for some topological phase transitions.
Although the topological order is known as a quantum order in quantum many-body systems, it seems that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between topological phases and quantum phases. As a well-known example, it has been shown that all one-dimensional (1D) quantum phases are topologically trivial [X. Chen et al., Phys. Rev. B 83, 035107 (2011)]. By such facts, it seems a challenging task to understand when a quantum phase transition between different topological models necessarily reveals different topological classes of them. In this paper, we make an attempt to consider this problem by studying a phase transition between two different quantum phases which have a universal topological phase. We define a Hamiltonian as interpolation of the toric code model with Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ topological order and the color code model with ${Z}_{2}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{Z}_{2}$ topological order on a hexagonal lattice. We show such a model is exactly mapped to many copies of 1D quantum Ising model in transverse field by rewriting the Hamiltonian in a new complete basis. Consequently, we show that the universal topological phase of the color code model and the toric code model reflects in the 1D nature of the phase transition. We also consider the expectation value of Wilson loops by a perturbative calculation and show that behavior of the Wilson loop captures the nontopological nature of the quantum phase transition. The result on the point of phase transition also shows that the color code model is strongly robust against the toric code model.
We investigate the quantum robustness of the topological order in the toric code on the honeycomb lattice in the presence of a uniform parallel field. For a field in z z -direction, the low-energy physics is in the flux-free sector and can be mapped to the transverse-field Ising model on the honeycomb lattice. One finds a second-order quantum phase transition in the 3D Ising ^\star ⋆ universality class for both signs of the field. The same is true for a postive field in x x -direction where an analogue mapping in the charge-free sector yields a ferromagnetic transverse-field Ising model on the triangular lattice and the phase transition is still 3D Ising ^\star ⋆ . In contrast, for negative x x -field, the charge-free sector is mapped to the highly frustrated antiferromagnetic transverse-field Ising model on the triangular lattice which is known to host a quantum phase transition in the 3D XY ^\star ⋆ universality class. Further, the charge-free sector does not always contain the low-energy physics for negative x x -fields and a first-order phase transition to the polarized phase in the charge-full sector takes place at larger negative field values. We quantify the location of this transition by comparing quantum Monte Carlo simulations and high-field series expansions. The full extension of the topological phase in the presence of x x - and z z -fields is determined by perturbative linked-cluster expansions using a full graph decomposition. Extrapolating the high-order series of the charge and the flux gap allows to estimate critical exponents of the gap closing. This analysis indicates that the topological order breaks down by critical lines of 3D Ising ^\star ⋆ and 3D XY ^\star ⋆ type with interesting potential multi-critical crossing points. All findings for the toric code on the honeycomb lattice can be transferred exactly to the toric code on the triangular lattice.
We study the phase transition from two different topological phases to the ferromagnetic phase by focusing on points of the phase transition. To this end, we present a detailed mapping from such models to the Ising model in a transverse field. Such a mapping is derived by rewriting the initial Hamiltonian in a new basis so that the final model in such a basis has a well-known approximated phase transition point. Specifically, we consider the toric codes and the color codes on various lattices with Ising perturbation. Our results provide a useful table to compare the robustness of the topological codes and to explicitly show that the robustness of the topological codes depends on triangulation of their underlying lattices.
Ground-state phase diagram of the toric code model in a parallel magnetic field has three distinct phases: topological, charge-condensed, and vortex-condensed states. To study it we consider an implicit local order parameter characterizing the transition between the topological and charge-condensed phases, and sample it using continuous-time Monte Carlo simulations. The corresponding second-order transition line is obtained by finite-size scaling analysis of this order parameter. Symmetry breaking between charges and vortices along the first-order transition line is also observed, and our numerical result shows that the end point of the first-order transition line is located at hx(c)=hz(c)=0.418(2){h}_{x}^{(c)}={h}_{z}^{(c)}=0.418(2)hx(c)​=hz(c)​=0.418(2).
We demonstrate that two toric code layers on the square lattice coupled by an Ising interaction display two distinct phases with intrinsic topological order. The second-order quantum phase transition between the weakly coupled ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ and the strongly coupled Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ topological order can be described by the condensation of bosonic quasiparticles from both sides and belongs to the three-dimensional Ising∗{\mathrm{Ising}}^{*}Ising∗ universality class. This can be shown by an exact duality transformation to the transverse-field Ising model on the square lattice, which builds on the existence of an extensive number of local Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ conserved parities. These conserved quantities correspond to the product of two adjacent star operators on different layers. Notably, we show that the low-energy effective model derived about the limit of large Ising coupling is given by an effective single-layer toric code in terms of the conserved quantities of the Ising toric code bilayer. The two topological phases are further characterized by the topological entanglement entropy which serves as a nonlocal order parameter.