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arXiv:1912.01406 · Physical review. E

Absence of small-world effects at the quantum level and stability of the quantum critical point

Massimo Ostilli

Published Nov 23, 2020• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The small-world effect is a universal feature used to explain many different phenomena like percolation, diffusion, and consensus. Starting from any regular lattice of N sites, the small-world effect can be attained by rewiring randomly an O(N) number of links or by superimposing an equivalent number of new links onto the system. In a classical system this procedure is known to change radically its critical point and behavior, the new system being always effectively mean-field. Here, we prove that at the quantum level the above scenario does not apply: when an O(N) number of new couplings are randomly superimposed onto a quantum Ising chain, its quantum critical point and behavior both remain unchanged. In other words, at zero temperature quantum fluctuations destroy any small-world effect. This exact result sheds new light on the significance of the quantum critical point as a thermodynamically stable feature of nature that has no analogy at the classical level and essentially prevents a naive application of network theory to quantum systems. The derivation is obtained by combining the quantum-classical mapping with a simple topological argument.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.102.052126

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The small-world effect is a universal feature used to explain many different phenomena like percolation, diffusion, and consensus. Starting from any regular lattice of N sites, the small-world effect can be attained by rewiring randomly an O(N) number of links or by superimposing an equivalent number of new links onto the system. In a classical system this procedure is known to change radically its critical point and behavior, the new system being always effectively mean-field. Here, we prove that at the quantum level the above scenario does not apply: when an O(N) number of new couplings are randomly superimposed onto a quantum Ising chain, its quantum critical point and behavior both remain unchanged. In other words, at zero temperature quantum fluctuations destroy any small-world effect. This exact result sheds new light on the significance of the quantum critical point as a thermodynamically stable feature of nature that has no analogy at the classical level and essentially prevents a naive application of network theory to quantum systems. The derivation is obtained by combining the quantum-classical mapping with a simple topological argument.
We study quantum Ising spins placed on small-world networks. A simple model is considered in which the coupling between any given pair of spins is a nonzero constant if they are linked in the small-world network, and zero otherwise. By applying a transverse magnetic field, we have investigated the effect of quantum fluctuations. Our numerical analysis shows that the quantum fluctuations do not alter the universality class at the ferromagnetic phase transition, which is of the mean-field type. The transition temperature is reduced by the quantum fluctuations and eventually vanishes at the critical transverse field Delta(c). With increasing rewiring probability, Delta(c) is shown to be enhanced.
While classical spin systems in random networks have been intensively studied, much less is known about quantum magnets in random graphs. Here, we investigate interacting quantum spins on small-world networks, building on mean-field theory and extensive quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Starting from one-dimensional (1D) rings, we consider two situations: all-to-all interacting and long-range interactions randomly added. The effective infinite dimension of the lattice leads to a magnetic ordering at finite temperature Tc{T}_{\mathrm{c}}Tc​ with mean-field criticality. Nevertheless, in contrast to the classical case, we find two distinct power-law behaviors for Tc{T}_{\mathrm{c}}Tc​ versus the average strength of the extra couplings. This is controlled by a competition between a characteristic length scale of the random graph and the thermal correlation length of the underlying 1D system, thus challenging mean-field theories. We also investigate the fate of a gapped 1D spin chain against the small-world effect.
The critical scaling behavior of Ising models with long range interactions is studied. These long-range interactions, when imposed in addition to interactions on a regular lattice, lead to small world graphs. Large-scale Monte Carlo simulations, together with finite-size scaling, is used to obtain the critical behavior of a number of different models. These include the z-model introduced by Scalettar, standard small-world bonds superimposed on a square lattice, and physical small-world bonds superimposed on a square lattice. These scaling results provide further evidence to support the existence of physical (quasi-) small-world nanomaterials.
We face the problem of detecting and featuring footprints of quantum criticality in the finite-temperature behavior of quantum many-body systems. Our strategy is that of comparing the phase diagram of a system displaying a T=0T=0T=0 quantum phase transition with that of its classical limit, in order to single out the genuinely quantum effects. To this aim, we consider the one-dimensional Ising model in a transverse field: while the quantum S=1∕2S=1∕2S=1∕2 Ising chain is exactly solvable and extensively studied, results for the classical limit $(S\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty})$ of such model are lacking, and we supply them here. They are obtained numerically, via the transfer-matrix method, and their asymptotic low-temperature behavior is also derived analytically by self-consistent spin-wave theory. We draw the classical phase diagram according to the same procedure followed in the quantum analysis, and the two phase diagrams are found unexpectedly similar: Three regimes are detected also in the classical case, each characterized by a functional dependence of the correlation length on temperature and field analogous to that of the quantum model. What discriminates the classical from the quantum case are the different values of the exponents entering such dependencies, a consequence of the different nature of zero-temperature quantum fluctuations with respect to the thermal ones.
When a quantum many-particle system exists on a randomly diluted lattice, its intrinsic thermal and quantum fluctuations coexist with geometric fluctuations due to percolation. In this paper, we explore how the interplay of these fluctuations influences the phase transition at the percolation threshold. While it is well known that thermal fluctuations generically destroy long-range order on the critical percolation cluster, the effects of quantum fluctuations are more subtle. In diluted quantum magnets with and without dissipation, this leads to novel universality classes for the zero-temperature percolation quantum phase transition. Observables involving dynamical correlations display nonclassical scaling behavior that can nonetheless be determined exactly in two dimensions.
We study the effect of quantum fluctuations on the critical behavior of the Ising ferromagnetic phase transitions that do not belong to the mean-field universality class. A model system is considered, in which Ising spins are placed on the nodes of a scale-free network. Our Monte Carlo analysis shows that the critical exponents differ from those of mean-field phase transitions when degree exponent gamma is in the range 3<gamma<5 . This confirms earlier analytic calculations based on ansatzes and approximation methods. As we apply quantum fluctuations by means of a magnetic field perpendicular to the Ising spin direction, the transition temperature T(c) decreases with increasing magnetic field strength. We find, however, that the quantum fluctuations do not alter the critical exponents and the universality class remains unchanged.