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arXiv:2305.03398 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Symmetry-protected topological phases, conformal criticalities, and duality in exactly solvable SO( n ) spin chains

Sreejith Chulliparambil, Hua-Chen Zhang, Hong-Hao Tu

Published Sep 7, 2023• 5 citations
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Abstract

We introduce a family of $\mathrm{SO}(n$)-symmetric spin chains which generalize the transverse-field Ising chain for $n=1$. These spin chains are defined with gamma matrices and can be exactly solved by mapping to $n$ species of itinerant Majorana fermions coupled to a static ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ gauge field. Their phase diagrams include a critical point described by the $\mathrm{Spin}{(n)}_{1}$ conformal field theory as well as two distinct gapped phases. We show that one of the gapped phases is a trivial phase and the other realizes a symmetry-protected topological phase when $n\ensuremath{\ge}2$. These two gapped phases are proved to be related to each other by a Kramers-Wannier duality. Furthermore, other elegant structures in the transverse-field Ising chain, such as the infinite-dimensional Onsager algebra, also carry over to our models.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.108.094411

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We introduce a family of SO(n\mathrm{SO}(nSO(n)-symmetric spin chains which generalize the transverse-field Ising chain for n=1n=1n=1. These spin chains are defined with gamma matrices and can be exactly solved by mapping to nnn species of itinerant Majorana fermions coupled to a static Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ gauge field. Their phase diagrams include a critical point described by the Spin(n)1\mathrm{Spin}{(n)}_{1}Spin(n)1​ conformal field theory as well as two distinct gapped phases. We show that one of the gapped phases is a trivial phase and the other realizes a symmetry-protected topological phase when n\ensuremath≥2n\ensuremath{\ge}2n\ensuremath≥2. These two gapped phases are proved to be related to each other by a Kramers-Wannier duality. Furthermore, other elegant structures in the transverse-field Ising chain, such as the infinite-dimensional Onsager algebra, also carry over to our models.
We construct a hierarchy of exactly solvable spin-1/2 chains with so(N)1so{(N)}_{1}so(N)1​ critical points. Our construction is based on the framework of condensate-induced transitions between topological phases. We employ this framework to construct a Hamiltonian term that couples NNN transverse field Ising chains such that the resulting theory is critical and described by the so(N)1so{(N)}_{1}so(N)1​ conformal field theory. By employing spin duality transformations, we then cast these spin chains for arbitrary NNN into translationally invariant forms that all allow exact solution by the means of a Jordan-Wigner transformation. For odd NNN our models generalize the phase diagram of the transverse field Ising chain, the simplest model in our hierarchy. For even NNN the models can be viewed as longer ranger generalizations of the XYXYXY chain, the next model in the hierarchy. We also demonstrate that our method of constructing spin chains with given critical points goes beyond exactly solvable models. Applying the same strategy to the Blume-Capel model, a spin-1 generalization of the Ising chain in a generic magnetic field, we construct another critical spin-1 chain with the predicted conformal field theory (CFT) describing the criticality.
We show that all so(N)_{1} universality class quantum criticalities emerge when one-dimensional generalized cluster models are perturbed with Ising or Zeeman terms. Each critical point is described by a low-energy theory of N linearly dispersing fermions, whose spectrum we show to precisely match the prediction by so(N)_{1} conformal field theory. Furthermore, by an explicit construction we show that all the cluster models are dual to nonlocally coupled transverse field Ising chains, with the universality of the so(N)_{1} criticality manifesting itself as N of these chains becoming critical. This duality also reveals that the symmetry protection of cluster models arises from the underlying Ising symmetries and it enables the identification of local representations for the primary fields of the so(N)_{1} conformal field theories. For the simplest and experimentally most realistic case that corresponds to the original one-dimensional cluster model with local three-spin interactions, our results show that the su(2)_{2}≃so(3)_{1} Wess-Zumino-Witten model can emerge in a local, translationally invariant, and Jordan-Wigner solvable spin-1/2 model.
It is well known that the noninteracting Majorana chain is dual to the one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model, either through the Jordan–Wigner transformation or by gauging fermion parity. In this correspondence, the minimal translation of the Majorana chain maps to the celebrated Kramers–Wannier (KW) duality of the spin model, with the critical point mapped to the self-dual point. In this work, we generalize this mapping to two and higher dimensions by constructing a unitary equivalence between the parity-gauged fermionic system and a spin system defined on arbitrary polyhedral decompositions of space. Imposing the flatness condition on the gauge field yields a bosonization duality between the original (ungauged) fermionic system and a gauged spin system obeying a Gauss law. The dependence of the Gauss law in the spin system on the Kasteleyn orientation (and the discrete spin structure) of the fermionic system is made explicit. Applying this bosonization to one or two copies of Majorana fermions on translationally invariant lattices, we derive higher-dimensional analogs of KW (self-) dualities in spin systems arising from fermionic minimal translations. The KW (self-) dualities are non-invertible due to projections onto eigenspaces of higher-form symmetries in the associated symmetry operators. The bosonization framework we present is intuitive, general, and systematic, encompassing other known exact bosonization methods while offering a novel approach to establish new connections between fermionic and spin systems in arbitrary dimensions.
Despite great successes in the study of gapped phases, a comprehensive understanding of the gapless phases and their transitions is still under development.In this paper, we study a general phenomenon in the space of (1 + 1)-dimensional critical phases with fermionic degrees of freedom described by a continuous family of conformal field theories (CFTs), also known as the conformal manifold.Along a one-dimensional locus on the conformal manifold, there can be a transition point, across which the fermionic CFTs on the two sides differ by stacking an invertible fermionic topological order (IFTO), point by point along the locus.At every point on the conformal manifold, the order and disorder operators have power-law two-point functions, but their critical exponents cross over with each other at the transition point, where stacking the IFTO leaves the fermionic CFT unchanged.We call this continuous transition on the fermionic conformal manifold a topological transition.By gauging the fermion parity, the IFTO stacking becomes a Kramers-Wannier duality between the corresponding bosonic CFTs.Both the IFTO stacking and the Kramers-Wannier duality are induced by the electromagnetic duality of the (2 + 1)-dimensional Z 2 topological order.We provide several examples of topological transitions, including the familiar Luttinger model of spinless fermions (i.e., the c = 1 massless Dirac fermion with the Thirring interaction) and a class of c = 2 examples describing U(1) × SU(2)-protected gapless phases.
Spin chains with two Ising symmetries are the Jordan-Wigner duals of one-dimensional interacting fermions with particle-hole and time-reversal symmetry. From earlier works on Majorana chains, it is known that this class of models has 10 distinct topological phases. In this paper, we analyze the physical properties of the correspondent 10 phases of the spin model. In particular, thanks to a set of two non-commuting dualities, we determine the local and non-local order parameters of the phases. We find that 4 phases are topologically protected by the Ising symmetries, while the other 6 break at least one symmetry. Our study highlights the non-trivial relation between the topological classifications of interacting bosons and fermions.
Effective field theory is a very useful technique for understanding quantum many body systems. We use this approach to study a certain class of critical quantum spin-1 chains and symmetry protected topological phases of matter in two spatial dimensions. In the first context we consider the SU(3) symmetric spin-1 chain with additional interactions. We use bosonization to demonstrate that the effective field theories describing the critical behaviour of these spin chains can be mapped to free compact boson conformal field theories (CFTs) with central charge c=2. We also describe how some predictions from field theory can be verified in numerical calculations using exact diagonalization (ED) and the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm. In particular, the bosonization method gives a formula for the evolution of four Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) parameters as a function of the lattice parameters. Using the analytic formulae for the scaling dimensions in terms of the TLL parameters and matching of lowest scaling dimensions, we numerically calculate these field-theoretic parameters and confirm that their evolution agrees with the prediction using bosonization. We also tackle aspects of the challenging problem of understanding interacting topological phases. In this context, we aim to understand the effects if interactions in certain classes of symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases of matter. We consider non-chiral SPT phases in two spatial dimensions protected by a discrete symmetry such as Z_K or Z_K x Z_K symmetry. We argue that modular invariance/noninvariance of the partition function of the one-dimensional edge theory can be used to diagnose whether, by adding a suitable potential, the edge theory can be gapped or not without breaking the symmetry. By taking bosonic phases described by Chern-Simons K-matrix theories and fermionic phases relevant to topological superconductors as examples, we demonstrate explicitly that when modular invariance is achieved, we can construct an interaction potential that is consistent with the symmetry and can completely gap out the edge. We also briefly discuss preliminary results of a numerical approach for simulating the 3 dimensional Landau Level problem. This includes a brief description of a potential application of variational Monte Carlo to spin-orbit coupled ab initio systems.