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arXiv:2301.02066 · Communications in Theoretical Physics

First-order excited-state quantum phase transition in the transverse Ising model with a longitudinal field

Yun-Tong Yang, Hong‐Gang Luo

Published Aug 6, 2025• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Investigations into first-order quantum phase transition (QPT) remain unclear in comparison to those of the second-order or continuous QPT, in which the order parameter and associated broken symmetry can be clearly identified and, at the same time, the concepts of universality class and critical scaling can be characterized by critical exponents. Here, we present a comparison study of these two kinds of QPT in the transverse Ising model; the emphasis is on the first-order QPT. In the absence of a longitudinal field, the ground state of the model exhibits a second-order QPT from the paramagnetic phase to the ferromagnetic phase, which is smeared out once the longitudinal field is applied. Surprisingly, the first excited state involves a first-order QPT as the longitudinal field increases, which has not been reported in the literature. Within the framework of the pattern picture, we clearly identify the difference between these two kinds of QPT: for the continuous QPT, only the pattern flavoring the ferromagnetic phase is always dominant over the others. By contrast, there are at least two competitive patterns in the first-order QPT, which is further indicated by the patterns’ occupancies, calculated by pattern projections on the ground- and first excited-state wavefunctions. Our results not only have a fundamental significance in the understanding of the nature of QPTs, but also a practical interest in quantum simulations used to test the present findings.

DOI
10.1088/1572-9494/adf83a

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Abstract Investigations into first-order quantum phase transition (QPT) remain unclear in comparison to those of the second-order or continuous QPT, in which the order parameter and associated broken symmetry can be clearly identified and, at the same time, the concepts of universality class and critical scaling can be characterized by critical exponents. Here, we present a comparison study of these two kinds of QPT in the transverse Ising model; the emphasis is on the first-order QPT. In the absence of a longitudinal field, the ground state of the model exhibits a second-order QPT from the paramagnetic phase to the ferromagnetic phase, which is smeared out once the longitudinal field is applied. Surprisingly, the first excited state involves a first-order QPT as the longitudinal field increases, which has not been reported in the literature. Within the framework of the pattern picture, we clearly identify the difference between these two kinds of QPT: for the continuous QPT, only the pattern flavoring the ferromagnetic phase is always dominant over the others. By contrast, there are at least two competitive patterns in the first-order QPT, which is further indicated by the patterns’ occupancies, calculated by pattern projections on the ground- and first excited-state wavefunctions. Our results not only have a fundamental significance in the understanding of the nature of QPTs, but also a practical interest in quantum simulations used to test the present findings.
Abstract A uniform longitudinal field applied to the transverse Ising model (TIM) distinguishes the antiferromagnetic Ising interaction from its ferromagnetic counterpart. While the ground state of the latter shows no quantum phase transition (QPT), the ground state of the former exhibits rich phases: paramagnetic, antiferromagnetic, and possibly disordered phases. Although the first two are clearly identified, the existence of the disordered phase remains controversial. Here, we use the pattern picture to explore the competition among the antiferromagnetic Ising interaction J , the transverse field h x and the longitudinal field h z , and uncover which patterns are responsible for these three competing energy scales, thereby determining the possible phases and the QPTs among them. The system size ranges from L = 8 to 128 and the transverse field h x is fixed at 1. Under these parameters, our results show the existence of the disordered phase. For a small h z , the system transitions from a disordered phase to an antiferromagnetic phase as J increases. For a large h z , the system undergoes two phase transitions: from paramagnetic to disordered, and then to antiferromagnetic phase. These results not only unveil the rich physics of this paradigmatic model but also stimulate quantum simulation by using currently available experimental platforms.
Despite the fact that a complete theoretical description of critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions has been well established through the renormalization-group theory, the microscopic nature of the phase transitions remains to be understood in a satisfactory way. For example, how does the interaction between particle/spins drive the system across distinct phases as parameters vary, and how do these particle/spins respond to parameter variations during this transition process? In this work, we investigate these questions through the paradigmatic example of quantum phase transitions (QPT) in the one-dimensional transverse Ising model (TIM). We first introduce 2L collective structures, referred to as patterns, for the TIM with L ferromagnetically interacting spins, and then analyze the contributions of these patterns to the system's states, e.g., the ground state, the first excited state, and so on, from which the analog of the QPT process between the disordered phase in the weakly coupling regime and the ferromagnetic phase in the strongly coupling regime is clearly identified at the interaction strength J_{c}=1. We systematically explore this process for small lattice sizes of L=6,8,10,12, whose ground-state energies are identical to those obtained by directly numerical exact diagonalization. Increasing the system size up to L=128, the actual QPT point located at J_{c}=1 in the thermodynamical limit is gradually approached. Our results show that the pattern picture is not only able to provide a microscopic process of phase transitions, but also of practical interest in analyzing analogues of QPT in diverse quantum simulation platforms.
The nature of phase transitions involving the questions why and how phase transitions take place has not been sufficiently touched in the literature. In contrast, the current attention to certain extent still focus on the description of critical phenomena and the classification of the associated phase transition along with the Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson paradigm, where the key issue is to identify phenomenologically order parameters and related symmetries. This brings the question to topological phase transitions (TPTs), where no obvious order parameter and the broken symmetry are identified. Here we present a unified pattern description of the second-order quantum phase transition (QPT) and TPT, both involved in the one-dimensional anisotropic quantum XY model in a transverse field, which contains the transverse Ising model (TIM) as a limit case. Away from the TIM, the XY model enters the ferromagnetic phase (marked by a second-order QPT or a direct TPT) as increasing ferromagentic exchange coupling, a series of TPTs occur, which are absent in the TIM. The TPTs behave like the first-order QPTs. In the isotropic and large exchange coupling cases, the ground state of the XY model is dominated by two topologically different vortices along positive and negative direction of the transverse field. We confirm the above conclusion by analyzing the energy contributions of the patterns to the ground state and calculating the ground state pattern occupations of the XY model. The results have been obtained in a unified and self-evident way and answer the questions why and how the QPT and TPTs take place in the XY model.
The critical properties of the one-dimensional spin-1/2 transverse Ising model in the presence of a longitudinal magnetic field were studied by the quantum fidelity method. We used exact diagonalization to obtain the ground-state energies and corresponding eigenvectors for lattice sizes up to 24 spins. The maximum of the fidelity susceptibility was used to locate the various phase boundaries present in the system. The type of dominant spin ordering for each phase was identified by examining the corresponding ground-state eigenvector. For a given antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor interaction J_{2}, we calculated the fidelity susceptibility as a function of the transverse field B_{x} and the longitudinal field B_{z}. The phase diagram in the (B_{x},B_{z})-plane shows three phases. These findings are in contrast with the published literature that claims that the system has only two phases. For B_{x}<1, we observed an antiferromagnetic phase for small values of B_{z} and a paramagnetic phase for large values of B_{z}. For B_{x}>1 and low B_{z}, we found a disordered phase that undergoes a second-order phase transition to a paramagnetic phase for large values of B_{z}.
Continuous symmetries are believed to emerge at many quantum critical points in frustrated magnets. In this work, we study two candidates of this paradigm: the transverse-field frustrated Ising model (TFFIM) on the triangular and the honeycomb lattices. The former is the prototypical example of this paradigm, and the latter has recently been proposed as another realization. Our large-scale Monte Carlo simulation confirms that the quantum phase transition (QPT) in the triangular lattice TFFIM indeed hosts an emergent O(2) symmetry, but that in the honeycomb lattice TFFIM is a first-order QPT and does not have an emergent continuous symmetry. Furthermore, our analysis of the order-parameter histogram reveals that such different behavior originates from the irrelevance and relevance of anisotropic terms near the QPT in the low-energy effective theory of the two models. The comparison between theoretical analysis and numerical simulation in this work paves the way for scrutinizing investigation of emergent continuous symmetry at classical and quantum phase transitions.
We find that the first-order quantum phase transitions (QPTs) are characterized by intrinsic jumps of relevant operators while the continuous ones are not. Based on such an observation, we propose a bond reversal method where a quantity D\mathcal{D}D, the difference of bond strength (DBS), is introduced to judge whether or not a QPT is of first order. This method is first applied to an exactly solvable spin-1/21/21/2 XXZ Heisenberg chain and a quantum Ising chain with a longitudinal field where distinct jumps of D\mathcal{D}D appear at the first-order transition points for both cases. We then use it to study the topological QPT of a cross-coupled (${J}_{\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}}$) spin ladder where the Haldane--rung-singlet transition switches from being continuous to exhibiting a first-order character at ${J}_{\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{},I}\ensuremath{\simeq}0.30(2)$. Finally, we study a recently proposed one-dimensional analogy of a deconfined quantum critical point connecting two ordered phases in a spin-1/21/21/2 chain. We rule out the possibility of a weakly first-order QPT because the DBS is smooth when crossing the transition point. Moreover, we affirm that such a transition belongs to the Gaussian universality class with a central charge c=1c=1c=1.