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arXiv:2502.14605

Emergent Goldstone flat bands and spontaneous symmetry breaking with type-B Goldstone modes

Huan-Qiang Zhou, Jesse J. Osborne, Qian‐Qian Shi, Ian P. McCulloch

Published Feb 20, 2025• 1 citation
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Abstract

For a quantum many-body spin system undergoing spontaneous symmetry breaking with type-B Goldstone modes, a high degree of degeneracy arises in the ground state manifold. Generically, if this degeneracy is polynomial in system size, then it does not depend on the type of boundary conditions used. However, if there exists an emergent (local) symmetry operation tailored to a specific degenerate ground state, then we show that the degeneracies are exponential in system size and are different under periodic boundary conditions (PBCs) and open boundary conditions (OBCs). We further show that the exponential ground state degeneracies in turn imply the emergence of Goldstone flat bands -- single-mode excitations generated by a multi-site operator and its images under the repeated action of the translation operation under PBCs or the cyclic permutation symmetry operation under OBCs. Conversely, we also show that the presence of emergent Goldstone flat bands implies that there exists an emergent (local) symmetry operation tailored to a specific degenerate ground state. In addition, we propose an extrinsic characterization of emergent Goldstone flat bands, revealing a connection to quantum many-body scars, which violate the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. We illustrate this by presenting examples from the staggered ${\rm SU}(4)$ spin-1 ferromagnetic biquadratic model and the staggered ${\rm SU}(4)$ ferromagnetic spin-orbital model. We also perform extensive numerical simulations for the more general ${\rm SO}(3)$ spin-1 bilinear-biquadratic and ${\rm SO(4)}$ ferromagnetic spin-orbital models, containing the two aforementioned models as the endpoints in the ferromagnetic regimes respectively, and confirm the emergence of Goldstone flat bands, as we approach these endpoints from deep inside the ferromagnetic regimes.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2502.14605

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For a quantum many-body spin system undergoing spontaneous symmetry breaking with type-B Goldstone modes, a high degree of degeneracy arises in the ground state manifold. Generically, if this degeneracy is polynomial in system size, then it does not depend on the type of boundary conditions used. However, if there exists an emergent (local) symmetry operation tailored to a specific degenerate ground state, then we show that the degeneracies are exponential in system size and are different under periodic boundary conditions (PBCs) and open boundary conditions (OBCs). We further show that the exponential ground state degeneracies in turn imply the emergence of Goldstone flat bands -- single-mode excitations generated by a multi-site operator and its images under the repeated action of the translation operation under PBCs or the cyclic permutation symmetry operation under OBCs. Conversely, we also show that the presence of emergent Goldstone flat bands implies that there exists an emergent (local) symmetry operation tailored to a specific degenerate ground state. In addition, we propose an extrinsic characterization of emergent Goldstone flat bands, revealing a connection to quantum many-body scars, which violate the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. We illustrate this by presenting examples from the staggered SU(4){\rm SU}(4)SU(4) spin-1 ferromagnetic biquadratic model and the staggered SU(4){\rm SU}(4)SU(4) ferromagnetic spin-orbital model. We also perform extensive numerical simulations for the more general SO(3){\rm SO}(3)SO(3) spin-1 bilinear-biquadratic and SO(4){\rm SO(4)}SO(4) ferromagnetic spin-orbital models, containing the two aforementioned models as the endpoints in the ferromagnetic regimes respectively, and confirm the emergence of Goldstone flat bands, as we approach these endpoints from deep inside the ferromagnetic regimes.
Type-B Goldstone modes and a logarithmic spiral in the staggered SU(4)\rm SU(4)SU(4) ferromagnetic spin-orbital model
It is found that the staggered SU(4)\rm SU(4)SU(4) ferromagnetic spin-orbital model accommodates highly degenerate ground states arising from spontaneous symmetry breaking with type-B Goldstone modes. The spontaneous symmetry breaking patterns are SU(4)→U(1)×U(1)×U(1){\rm SU(4)} \rightarrow {\rm U(1)} \times {\rm U(1)} \times {\rm U(1)}SU(4)→U(1)×U(1)×U(1), with three type-B Goldstone modes or SO(4)∼SU(2)×SU(2)→U(1)×U(1){\rm SO(4)} \sim {\rm SU(2)} \times {\rm SU(2)} \rightarrow {\rm U(1)} \times {\rm U(1)}SO(4)∼SU(2)×SU(2)→U(1)×U(1), with two type-B Goldstone modes, depending on the system size being even or odd. An abstract fractal constitutes the underlying structure of the ground-state subspace. For a sequence of atypical degenerate ground states the fractal dimension is identified with the number of type-B Goldstone modes. This connection is established by evaluating the entanglement entropy for these atypical degenerate ground states. The observed universal finite system-size scaling behavior of the entanglement entropy follows a logarithmic scaling relation with the block size in the thermodynamic limit. In addition, the ground state degeneracies, depending on the boundary conditions adopted, constitute the two Fibonacci-Lucas sequences. In the limit of large system size their asymptotic forms become a self-similar logarithmic spiral. As a result, the model has a non-zero residual entropy $S_{r} = -2 \ln R $, where R=( ⁣6− ⁣2)/2R=(\! \sqrt{6}-\!\sqrt{2})/2R=(6​−2​)/2.
Abstract Ferromagnetic ground states have often been overlooked in comparison to seemingly more interesting antiferromagnetic ground states. However, both the physical and mathematical structure of ferromagnetic ground states are particularly rich. We show that the highly degenerate and highly entangled ground states of the ferromagnetic spin-1 biquadratic model are scale invariant, originating from spontaneous symmetry breaking from SU ( 3 ) to U ( 1 ) × U ( 1 ) with two type-B Goldstone modes (GMs) if the system size is even or from SU ( 2 ) to U ( 1 ) with one type-B GM if the system size is odd, when periodic boundary conditions (PBCs) are adopted. The ground state degeneracies are characterized as Fibonacci–Lucas sequences, under open and PBCs, with nonzero residual entropy per site. This implies that the ground state degeneracies for this model are asymptotically the golden spiral. In addition, sequences of atypical (periodic) degenerate ground states generated from highest and generalized highest weight states are constructed to establish that the entanglement entropy scales logarithmically with the block size in the thermodynamic limit. The prefactor is half the number of type-B GMs, which is identified to be the fractal dimension, if one is restricted to atypical degenerate ground states. We also argue that the same conclusion is valid for typical (non-periodic) degenerate ground states, as long as the block size is sufficiently large.
The one-dimensional flat-band ferromagnetic Tasaki model exhibits spontaneous symmetry breaking from SU(2){\rm SU}(2)SU(2) to U(1){\rm U}(1)U(1) with one type-B Goldstone mode, featuring that the highest weight state is entangled at quarter filling, but there is always a choice to keep the highest weight state unentangled away from quarter filling. It is found that the ground-state degeneracies under both periodic and open boundary conditions constitute essentially the Fibonacci sequences, behaving asymptotically as the golden spiral - a self-similar geometric object. A set of orthonormal basis states are generated from the repeated action of the lowering operator of the symmetry group SU(2){\rm SU}(2)SU(2) on the highest weight state at a specific filling. In particular, it is possible to construct the orthonormal basis states reflecting an abstract fractal underlying the ground-state subspace, which are permutation-invariant away from quarter filling, but not at quarter filling. As a consequence, there exists a singularity that accounts for the emergence of the saturated flat-band ferromagnetism at quarter filling. We perform a systematic finite system-size scaling analysis of the entanglement entropy, thus confirming that it scales logarithmically with the block size in the thermodynamic limit, with the prefactor being half the number of type-B Goldstone modes, for the orthonormal basis states at and away from quarter filling.
Exact matrix product state representations for a type of scale-invariant states are presented, which describe highly degenerate ground states arising from spontaneous symmetry breaking with type-B Goldstone modes in one-dimensional quantum many-body systems. As a possible application, such a representation offers a convenient but powerful means for evaluating the norms of highly degenerate ground states. This in turn allows us to perform a universal finite system-size scaling analysis of the entanglement entropy. Moreover, this approach vividly explains why the entanglement entropy does not depend on what types of the boundary conditions are adopted, either periodic boundary conditions or open boundary conditions. Illustrative examples include the SU(2){\rm SU}(2)SU(2) spin-sss Heisenberg ferromagnetic model, the SU(2s+1){\rm SU}(2s+1)SU(2s+1) ferromagnetic model, and the staggered SU(3){\rm SU}(3)SU(3) spin-1 ferromagnetic biquadratic model.
A generic scheme is proposed to perform a finite-entanglement scaling analysis for scale-invariant states, which appear to be highly degenerate ground states arising from spontaneous symmetry breaking with type-B Goldstone modes. This allows us to extract the number of type-B Goldstone modes and the dynamical critical exponent, in combination with a finite block-size scaling analysis, from numerical simulations of quantum many-body systems in the context of tensor network representations. The number of type-B Goldstone modes is identical to the fractal dimension, thus reflecting an abstract fractal underlying the ground state subspace. As illustrative examples, we investigate the spin-sss Heisenberg ferromagnetic model, the SU(3)\rm{SU}(3)SU(3) ferromagnetic model and the SO(4)\rm{SO}(4)SO(4) spin-orbital model.
The one-dimensional spin-sSU(2)s\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\mathrm{SU}(2)sSU(2) ferromagnetic Heisenberg model, as a paradigmatic example for spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) with type-B Goldstone modes (GMs), is expected to exhibit an abstract fractal underlying the ground-state subspace. This intrinsic abstract fractal is here revealed from a systematic investigation into the entanglement entropy for a linear combination of factorized (unentangled) ground states on a fractal decomposable into a set of the Cantor sets. The entanglement entropy scales logarithmically with the block size, with the prefactor being half the fractal dimension of a fractal, as first noted by Castro-Alvaredo and Doyon for the spin-1/21/21/2 ferromagnetic Heisenberg model [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 (2012) 120401], as long as the norm for the linear combination scales as the square root of the number of the self-similar building blocks kept at each step kkk for a fractal, under an assumption that the maximum absolute value of the coefficients in the linear combination is chosen to be around one, and the coefficients in the linear combination are almost constants within the building blocks. Actually, the set of the fractal dimensions for all the Cantor sets forms a dense subset in the interval [0,1]. As a consequence, the ground-state subspace is separated into a disjoint union of countably infinitely many regions, each of which is labeled by a decomposable fractal. Hence, the interpretation of the prefactor as half the fractal dimension is valid for any support beyond a fractal, which in turn leads to the identification of the fractal dimension with the number of type-B GMs for the orthonormal basis states. Our argument may be extended to any quantum many-body systems undergoing SSB with type-B GMs.