The non-Hermitian extension of quasicrystals (QC) are highly tunable system for exploring novel material phases. While extended-localized phase transitions have been observed in one dimension, quantum phase transition in higher dimensions and various system sizes remain unexplored. Here, we show the discovery of a new critical phase and imaginary zeros induced first-order quantum phase transition within the two-dimensional (2D) Haldane model with a quasicrystal potential on the upper boundary. Initially, we illustrate a phase diagram that evolves with the amplitude and phase of the quasiperiodic potential, which is divided into three distinct phases by two critical boundaries: phase (I) with extended wave functions, PT-restore phase (II) with localized wave functions, and a critical phase (III) with multifunctional wave functions. To describe the wavefunctions in these distinct phases, we introduce a low-energy approximation theory and an effective two-chain model. Additionally, we uncover a first-order structural phase transition induced (FOSPT) by imaginary zeros. As we increase the size of the potential boundary, we observe the critical phase splitting into regions in proportion to the growing number of potential zeros. Importantly, these observations are consistent with groundstate fidelity and energy gap calculations. Our research enhances the comprehension of phase diagrams associated with high-dimensional quasicrystal potentials, offering valuable contributions to the exploration of unique phases and quantum phase transition.
The scaling law of entanglement entropy could undergo qualitative changes during the nonunitary evolution of a quantum many-body system. In this work, we uncover such entanglement phase transitions for free fermions in one-dimensional non-Hermitian quasicrystals (NHQCs). We identify two types of entanglement transitions with different scaling laws and critical behaviors due to the interplay between non-Hermitian effects and quasiperiodic potentials. The first type represents a typical volume-law to area-law transition, which happens together with a PT-symmetry breaking and a localization transition. The second type features an abnormal log-law to area-law transition, which is mediated by a critical phase with a volume-law scaling in the steady-state entanglement entropy. These entangling phases and transitions are demonstrated in two representative models of noninteracting NHQCs. Our results thus advance the study of entanglement transitions in non-Hermitian disordered systems and further disclose the rich entanglement patterns in NHQCs.
Many-body localization at nonzero temperature is a quantum-phase transition that is of very fundamental interest to both many-body quantum physics and statistical mechanics. Non-Hermitian systems possess rich and unique phenomena that never are found in their Hermitian counterparts, such as unidirectional invisibility and enhanced sensitivity. In the present study, we explore many-body localization in periodically driven non-Hermitian lattices. The lattices are one-dimensional, and the drive is designed in a piecewise two-step form that consists of a uniform coherent tunneling and incommensurate onsite gain and loss. We find that the system can be in localized, delocalized, or mixed phases depending on the driving frequency and the phase shift of the complex potential. Two critical driving frequencies are identified; one corresponds to the largest phase shift of the complex potential that keeps all the quasienergy spectra real and the eigenstates extended, and the other one is established by the vanishing of all real spectra. We also find that a very weak complex potential can lead the system to localization, when the driving frequency is lower than the critical frequency. We show that in the high-frequency limit, the critical phase shift that separates the two regions with respectively a real and complex spectrum tends to a constant, and the constant can be determined by an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian.
The multifractal critical phase (MCP) fundamentally differs from extended and localized phases, exhibiting delocalized distributions in both position and momentum spaces. The investigation on the MCP has largely focused on one-dimensional quasiperiodic systems. Here, we introduce a two-dimensional (2D) quasiperiodic model with a MCP. We present its phase diagram and investigate the characteristics of the 2D system's MCP in terms of wave packet diffusion and transport based on this model. We further investigate the movement of the phase boundary induced by the introduction of next-nearest-neighbor hopping by calculating the fidelity susceptibility. Finally, we consider how to realize our studied model in superconducting circuits. Our work opens the door to exploring MCP in 2D systems.
We study the single-particle properties of two-dimensional quasicrystals where the underlying geometry of the tight-binding lattice is crystalline but the on-site potential is quasicrystalline. We will focus on the two-dimensional (2D) generalized Aubry-André model which has a varying form to its quasiperiodic potential, through a deformation parameter and varied irrational periods of cosine terms, which allows a continuous family of on-site quasicrystalline models to be studied. We show that the 2D generalized Aubry-André model exhibits many single-particle mobility edges which we confirm for finite systems and supports critical states across large parameter regions. Critical states are neither fully localized nor extended. We observe that diagonal quasicrystalline models can support many energy intervals of critical states in the spectrum while stabilizing both localized and extended states in other energy intervals; we refer to these as anomalous mobility edges. We show that critical states are present independent of system size through a scaling analysis of the inverse participation ratio and that they are present in spectra that also contain extended and localized states, confirming that at least one anomalous mobility edge is present. Due to this, these models exhibit anomalous diffusion of initially localized states across the majority of parameter regions, including deep in the normally localized regime. The presence of critical states in large parameter regimes and throughout the spectrum will have consequences for the many-body properties of quasicrystals, including the formation of the Bose glass and the potential to host a many-body localized phase. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
The critical phase of a non-Hermitian quasicrystal can support stronger transport than its surrounding delocalized phase. We demonstrate this anomalous behavior in the one-dimensional nonreciprocal Aubry-André-Harper model through a combined study of dynamical quantum phase transitions (DQPTs) and wavepacket diffusion. Using a parity-sorted energy-spectrum classification that directly encodes the generalized
PT symmetry, we find that DQPTs in this system are energy-resolved, in contrast to the energy-independent DQPTs of Hermitian quasicrystals. The energy-resolved features are most pronounced when the initial and final Hamiltonians belong to different phases (localized or extended), and they are tied to the even-odd index structure of the spectrum, which we exploit to organize the quench-dynamical landscape. For wavepacket dynamics after a single-site quench, the diffusion exponent
β, extracted from the long-time power-law scaling of the root-mean-square displacement
σ(τ), partitions the phase diagram into four distinct regimes. In the Hermitian limit the extended phase is ballistic (
β=1), the critical phase is normally diffusive (
β=0.5), and the localized phase yields
β→0. Nonreciprocity reverses this hierarchy: the extended phase becomes normally diffusive, while the critical phase turns ballistic. We trace the anomalous
β=1 at criticality to the self-similar multifractal structure of the critical eigenstates, whose nodal positions are organized by the golden ratio. A finite-size scaling ansatz built on the wave-front propagation yields
σ(τ)∝τ. The parity-resolved DQPTs and the
β-phase diagram establish two complementary dynamical diagnostics of nonreciprocal quasicrystals, in which nonreciprocity promotes transport at the critical point and suppresses it in the delocalized phase.
The phase diagram of the quantum spin-
21 antiferromagnetic ${J}_{1}^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{2}^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}$ XXZ chain was obtained by Haldane using bosonization techniques [Haldane, Phys. Rev. B 25, 4925 (1982); Phys. Rev. B 26, 5257 (1982)]. It supports three distinct phases for $0\ensuremath{\le}{J}_{2}^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}/{J}_{1}^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}<\frac{1}{2}$, i.e., a gapless algebraic spin-liquid phase, a gapped long-range ordered Neel phase, and a gapped long-range ordered dimer phase. Even though the Neel and dimer phases are not related hierarchically by a pattern of symmetry breaking, it was shown that they meet along a line of quantum critical points with a U(1) symmetry and central charge
c=1. Here, we extend the analysis made by Haldane on the quantum spin-
21 antiferromagnetic ${J}_{1}^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{2}^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}$ XYZ chain using both bosonization and numerical techniques. We show that there are three Neel phases and the dimer phase that are separated from each other by six planes of phase boundaries realizing Gaussian criticality when $0\ensuremath{\le}{J}_{2}^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}/{J}_{1}^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}<\frac{1}{2}$. We also show that each long-range ordered phase harbors topological point defects (domain walls) that are dual to those across the phase boundary in that a defect in one ordered phase locally binds the other type of order around its core. By using the bosonization approach, we identify the critical theory that describes simultaneous proliferation of these dual point defects, and show that it supports an emergent U(1) symmetry that originates from the discrete symmetries of the XYZ model. To confirm this numerically, we perform exact diagonalization and density-matrix renormalization-group calculations and show that the critical theory is characterized by the central charge
c=1 with critical exponents that are consistent with those obtained from the bosonization approach. Furthermore, we generalize the field-theoretic description of direct continuous phase transition to higher dimensions, especially in
d=3, by using a nonlinear sigma model (NLSM) with a topological term. In particular, we propose the $\ensuremath{\pi}$-flux phase on the cubic lattice with local quartic interactions as a platform for direct continuous phase transition and deconfined criticality. We discuss possible phase diagrams for the $\ensuremath{\pi}$-flux phase on the cubic lattice with these quartic interactions from the renormalization flow of NLSMs.