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arXiv:2003.08029 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Ising chain with topological degeneracy induced by dissipation

K. L. Zhang, Z. Song

Published Jun 22, 2020• 17 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The ground-state degeneracy of the quantum spin system is a characteristic of nontrivial topology when it is gapped and robust against disordered perturbation. The corresponding quantum phase transition (QPT) is usually driven by a real parameter. We study a non-Hermitian Ising chain with two transverse fields, one real and another imaginary, based on the exact solution and numerical simulation. We show that topological degeneracy still exists and can be obtained by an imaginary transverse field from a topologically trivial phase of a Hermitian system. The topological degeneracy is robust against the random imaginary field and therefore expected to be immune to disordered dissipation from the spontaneous decay in experiment. The underlying mechanism is the nonlocal symmetry, which emerges only in thermodynamic limit and relates two categories of QPTs in the quantum spin system, rooted from topological order and symmetry breaking, respectively.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.101.245152

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The ground-state degeneracy of the quantum spin system is a characteristic of nontrivial topology when it is gapped and robust against disordered perturbation. The corresponding quantum phase transition (QPT) is usually driven by a real parameter. We study a non-Hermitian Ising chain with two transverse fields, one real and another imaginary, based on the exact solution and numerical simulation. We show that topological degeneracy still exists and can be obtained by an imaginary transverse field from a topologically trivial phase of a Hermitian system. The topological degeneracy is robust against the random imaginary field and therefore expected to be immune to disordered dissipation from the spontaneous decay in experiment. The underlying mechanism is the nonlocal symmetry, which emerges only in thermodynamic limit and relates two categories of QPTs in the quantum spin system, rooted from topological order and symmetry breaking, respectively.
We investigate a quantum dynamical phase transition induced by the competition between local unitary evolution and dissipation in a qubit chain with a strong, on-site Z2\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​ symmetry. While the steady-state of this evolution is always maximally-mixed, we show that the dynamical behavior of certain non-local observables on the approach to this steady-state is dictated by a quantum Ising model with a complex transverse-field (cTFIM). A crucial feature of our mapping to the cTFIM is an extensive number of local, weak, Z2\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​ symmetries possessed by the dynamics, allowing us to investigate these observables analytically and uncover a dynamical phase transition as the relative rate of unitary evolution and dissipation is tuned. We show that the weak-dissipation limit corresponds to a cTFIM with a large magnitude of the imaginary transverse-field, for which the many-body "ground-state" (with smallest real eigenvalue) is gapless, exhibiting quasi-long-range correlations of the local magnetization with a continuously-varying exponent. Correspondingly, the dynamics of the non-local observables show oscillatory behavior with an amplitude decaying exponentially in time. The strong-dissipation limit corresponds to a gapped ferromagnetic phase of the cTFIM, and non-local observables show exponential decay on the approach to equilibrium. This transition in (1+1)-dimensions has a peculiar, "two-sided" nature appearing as either first- or second-order depending on the phase from which the transition is approached, an analytic result which is corroborated by numerical studies. In higher dimensions, we present a field-theoretic understanding of the first-order nature of this transition, when approaching from the ferromagnetic phase of the cTFIM, though the nature of the phase with large imaginary transverse-field remains to be understood.
We investigate the low-energy physics of non-Hermitian quantum spin models with PTPTPT symmetry. To this end, we consider the one-dimensional Ising chain and the two-dimensional toric code in a non-Hermitian staggered field. For both systems, dual descriptions in terms of non-Hermitian staggered Ising interactions in a conventional transverse field exist. We perform high-order series expansions about the high- and low-field limit for both systems to determine the ground-state energy per site and the one-particle gap. The one-dimensional non-Hermitian Ising chain is known to be exactly solvable. Its ground-state phase diagram consists of second-order quantum phase transitions, which can be characterized by logarithmic singularities of the second derivative of the ground-state energy and, in the symmetry-broken phase, the gap closing of the low-field gap. In contrast, the gap closing from the high-field phase is not accessible perturbatively due to the complex energy and the occurrence of exceptional lines in the high-field gap expression. For the two-dimensional toric code in a non-Hermitian staggered field, we study the quantum robustness of the topologically ordered phase by the gap closing of the low-field gap. We find that the well-known second-order quantum phase transition of the toric code in a uniform field extends into a large portion of the non-Hermitian parameter space. However, the series expansions become unreliable for a dominant anti-Hermitian field. Interestingly, the analysis of the high-field gap reveals the potential presence of an intermediate region.
The influence of boundary conditions on bulk properties is generally expected to vanish in the thermodynamic limit. Here we show that this expectation can fail in an open transverse field Ising chain with modified boundary fields. By removing only the transverse fields acting on the two edge spins while leaving the bulk Hamiltonian unchanged, we uncover a boundary-induced switching of the topological spectral degeneracy. In contrast to the conventional open chain, where the topological degeneracy occurs in the ferromagnetic phase (∣g∣<1\left\vert g\right\vert <1∣g∣<1), the modified boundary condition shifts it to the paramagnetic phase (∣g∣>1\left\vert g\right\vert >1∣g∣>1). We demonstrate that the underlying mechanism originates from two exact local conserved quantities associated with the edge spins, which partition the Hilbert space into invariant sectors. Based on this structure, we establish an exact description in terms of domain-wall excitations, under which the Hamiltonian decomposes into two independent Kitaev chains. Complementarily, the Majorana representation reveals that the spectral switching originates from different unit-cell conventions and boundary terminations of the corresponding effective SSH lattice, leading to distinct boundary zero-mode structures without altering the bulk Hamiltonian. Furthermore, we show that the boundary-induced topological degeneracy remains observable at finite temperatures through non-Hermitian quench dynamics, providing a dynamical manifestation of the bulk-boundary correspondence. These results demonstrate that boundary engineering, through the introduction of local conserved boundary degrees of freedom, provides an effective route for controlling topological degeneracy in quantum spin chains without modifying bulk interactions.
model with a complex transverse field, where the imaginary transverse field can be generated by three-level atoms with spontaneous decay. Many-body spectrum can be obtained analytically. The phase diagram in thermodynamical limit indicates that the imaginary transverse field induces non-Hermitian degeneracy and shrinks the ferromagnetic phase for anisotropic interaction. We also analyze the effect of imaginary field on quantum criticality through ground state geometry phase. It causes a shift of transition point but does not change the order of phase transition in anisotropic interaction region. However, the phase transition is related to the original Hermitian degeneracy in anisotropic interaction region, which indicates that the imaginary transverse field cannot change phase boundary and critical behavior.
A conventional quantum phase transition (QPT) can be accessed by varying a real parameter at absolute zero temperature. Motivated by the discovery of the pseudo-Hermiticity of non-Hermitian systems, we explore the QPT in the non-Hermitian $\mathcal{PT}\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{symmetric}$ Ising model, which is driven by a staggered complex transverse field. Exact solution shows that the Laplacian of the ground-state energy density, with respect to real and imaginary components of the transverse field, diverges on the boundary in the complex plane. The phase diagram indicates that the imaginary transverse field has the effect of shrinking the paramagnetic phase. In addition, we also investigate the connection between the geometric phase and the QPT.
A quantum phase transition (QPT), including both topological and symmetry breaking types, is usually induced by the change of global parameters, such as external fields or global coupling constants. In this work, we demonstrate the existence of QPT induced by the real-space topology of the system. We investigate the groundstate properties of the tight-binding model on a honeycomb lattice with the torus geometry based on exact results. It is shown that the ground state experiences a second-order QPT, exhibiting the scaling behavior, when the torus switches to a tube, which reveals the connection between quantum phase and the real-space topology of the system.