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arXiv:2104.11662

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in finite systems and anomalous order-parameter correlations

Diakonos, Fotis K., Yiannis Contoyiannis, Stelios M. Potirakis

Published Apr 23, 2021• 0 citations
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Abstract

We show that the spontaneous symmetry breaking can be defined also for finite systems based on the properly defined jump probability between the ground states in the 2d and 3d Ising models on a square and a cubic lattice respectively. Our analysis reveals the existence of an interval in the temperature (control parameter) space within which the spontaneous symmetry breaking takes place. The upper limit of this region is the pseudocritical point where the symmetric vacuum bifurcates in energetically degenerate non-symmetric vacua, initiating the spontaneous symmetry breaking process. The lower limit, identified as the temperature value at which the spontaneous symmetry breaking is completed, is characterized by maximal characteristic time for the decay of magnetization (order parameter) auto-correlations. We argue that this anomalous enhancement of auto-correlations is attributed to the transition from type I to on-off intermittency in the order parameter dynamics. Possible phenomenological implications of this behaviour are briefly discussed.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2104.11662

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We show that the spontaneous symmetry breaking can be defined also for finite systems based on the properly defined jump probability between the ground states in the 2d and 3d Ising models on a square and a cubic lattice respectively. Our analysis reveals the existence of an interval in the temperature (control parameter) space within which the spontaneous symmetry breaking takes place. The upper limit of this region is the pseudocritical point where the symmetric vacuum bifurcates in energetically degenerate non-symmetric vacua, initiating the spontaneous symmetry breaking process. The lower limit, identified as the temperature value at which the spontaneous symmetry breaking is completed, is characterized by maximal characteristic time for the decay of magnetization (order parameter) auto-correlations. We argue that this anomalous enhancement of auto-correlations is attributed to the transition from type I to on-off intermittency in the order parameter dynamics. Possible phenomenological implications of this behaviour are briefly discussed.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs in a system when its Hamiltonian possesses a certain symmetry, whereas the ground-state wave functions do not preserve it. This provides such a scenario that a bifurcation, which breaks the symmetry, occurs when some control parameter crosses its critical value. It is unveiled that the ground-state fidelity per lattice site exhibits such a bifurcation for quantum lattice systems undergoing quantum phase transitions. The significance of this result lies in the fact that the ground-state fidelity per lattice site is universal, in the sense that it is model independent, in contrast to (model-dependent) order parameters. This fundamental quantity may be computed by exploiting the developed tensor network algorithms on infinite-size lattices. We illustrate the scheme in terms of the quantum Ising model in a transverse magnetic field and the spin-1/2 XYX model in an external magnetic field on an infinite-size lattice in one spatial dimension.
In finite-size thermal systems that exhibit second-order phase transition, the fluctuations of the order parameter ϕn obey type I intermittent dynamics at their pseudocritical temperature Tpc . Moreover, as recently demonstrated, spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) is gradually completed as temperature is reduced until reaching an SSB completion temperature, TSSB . Within this temperature zone, ϕn obey the dynamics of critical intermittency. This behavior has also been observed in pre-seismic fracture-induced electromagnetic emissions (FEME) of the MHz band—a real-world finite-size system undergoing a second-order phase transition. Interestingly, MHz FEME has recently been found to consistently present indications of tricritical dynamics after the SSB. We examine here whether this could also be true for a finite-size thermal system. We conduct a numerical experiment for the 3D Ising model at different temperatures by gradually reducing temperature beyond SSB and analyze order parameter fluctuations using the method of critical fluctuations (MCF) and a recently introduced wavelet-based method for detecting scaling behavior in noisy experimental data. Our results reveal that power-laws still exist within a very narrow zone of temperatures right after SSB completion for the 3D Ising model. These power-laws are shown to be compatible with another form of intermittency that determines the dynamics of the order parameter fluctuations close to the Griffiths tricritical point. As a possible interpretation of this finding, we suggest that our results imply that 3D Ising presents, just below TSSB , an imprint approaching the Griffiths tricritical point from the second-order phase transition line.
A cornerstone of the theory of phase transitions is the observation that many-body systems exhibiting a spontaneous symmetry breaking in the thermodynamic limit generally show extensive fluctuations of an order parameter in large but finite systems. In this work, we introduce the dynamical analog of such a theory. Specifically, we consider local dissipative dynamics preparing an equilibrium steady-state of quantum spins on a lattice exhibiting a discrete or continuous symmetry but with extensive fluctuations in a local order parameter. We show that for all such processes, there exist asymptotically stationary symmetry-breaking states, i.e., states that become stationary in the thermodynamic limit and give a finite value to the order parameter. We give results both for discrete and continuous symmetries and explicitly show how to construct the symmetry-breaking states. Our results show in a simple way that, in large systems, local dissipative dynamics satisfying detailed balance cannot uniquely and efficiently prepare states with extensive fluctuations with respect to local operators. We discuss the implications of our results for quantum simulators and dissipative state preparation.
We establish an intriguing connection between quantum phase transitions and bifurcations in the ground-state fidelity per lattice site, and construct the universal order parameter for quantum Ising model in a transverse magnetic field on an infinite-size square lattice in two spatial dimensions, a prototypical model with symmetry breaking order. This is achieved by computing ground-state wave functions in the context of the tensor network algorithm based on the infinite projected entangled-pair state representation. Our finding is applicable to any systems with symmetry breaking order, as a result of the fact that, in the conventional Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm, a quantum system undergoing a phase transition is characterized in terms of spontaneous symmetry breaking captured by a local order parameter. In addition, a bifurcation in the reduced fidelity between two different reduced density matrices is also discussed.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) occurs when a many-body system governed by a symmetric Hamiltonian, and prepared in a symmetry-broken state by the application of a field coupling to its order parameter O, retains a finite O value even after the field is switched off. SSB is generally thought to occur only in the thermodynamic limit N→∞ (for N degrees of freedom). In this limit, the time to restore the symmetry once the field is turned off, either via thermal or quantum fluctuations, is expected to diverge. Here, we show that SSB can also be observed in finite-size quantum spin systems, provided that the spin is half-integer and three conditions are met: (1) the ground state of the system has long-range correlations, (2) the Hamiltonian conserves the (spin) parity of the order parameter, and (3) N is odd. Using a combination of analytical arguments and numerical results (based on time-dependent variational Monte Carlo and rotor + spin-wave theory), we show that SSB on finite-size systems can be achieved via a quasiadiabatic preparation of the ground state-which, in U(1)-symmetric systems, is shown to require a symmetry-breaking field vanishing over timescales τ∼O(N). In these systems, the symmetry-broken state exhibits spin squeezing with Heisenberg scaling.
Landau's spontaneous symmetry breaking theory is a fundamental theory that describes the collective behaviors in many-body systems. It was well known that for usual spontaneous symmetry breaking in Hermitian systems, the order-disorder phase transition with gap closing and spontaneous symmetry breaking occur at the same critical point. In this paper, we generalized the Landau's spontaneous symmetry breaking theory to the cases in non-Hermitian (NH) many-body systems with biorthogonal Z2 symmetry and tried to discover certain universal features. We were surprised to find that the effect of the NH terms splits the spontaneous biorthogonal Z2 symmetry breaking from a (biorthogonal) order-disorder phase transition with gap closing. The sudden change of similarity for two degenerate ground states indicates a new type of quantum phase transition without gap closing accompanied by spontaneous biorthogonal Z2 symmetry breaking. We will take the NH transverse Ising model as an example to investigate the anomalous spontaneous symmetry breaking. The numerical results were consistent with the theoretical predictions.