Solid-state systems offer immense untapped potential for simulating exotic quantum phenomena. Here, the authors introduce a solid-state platform for analog quantum simulators utilizing
S=1 spin centers implanted in diamond, interacting through magnetic dipole-dipole interactions. This system exhibits a range of quantum phases and critical behaviors that can be controlled by adjusting the magnetic field and the orientation of the spin centers. Notably, it features critical floating phases that terminate at Berezinskii--Kosterlitz--Thouless and Pokrovsky-Talapov transition points.
We investigate Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transitions in one-dimensional Rydberg chains, where commensurate critical regimes associated with the melting of crystalline orders with period larger than five and incommensurate floating phases are both described by Luttinger liquid theory. The central quantity is the Luttinger liquid parameter
K, which characterizes the universal low-energy theory and controls the relevance of perturbations driving BKT transitions. We extract
K using Friedel oscillations and the recently developed crosscap method introduced in Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 076501 (2025). As benchmarks, we first apply the crosscap method to a
Z3 dual hard-core boson chain and a spin-1 XY chain with single-ion anisotropy, obtaining BKT transition points consistent with previous results after finite-size extrapolation. We then compute
K in the Rydberg chain along lines with fixed correlation-oscillation period near BKT transitions. Along the commensurate period-five line, the critical values of
K predicted by sine-Gordon theory reveal two BKT transitions separating the disordered phase, the critical phase, and the
Z5 crystalline phase. The results from Friedel oscillations and the crosscap method agree with each other and are further supported by energy-gap scaling and Binder-cumulant analysis. To obtain reliable values of
K from Friedel oscillations, we use a multi-harmonic fitting scheme throughout the analysis. Along incommensurate lines, the BKT points obtained from Friedel oscillations agree with those extracted from entanglement entropy. Finally, we show that the values of
K obtained from the two methods are mutually consistent inside the incommensurate floating phase.
In the present work, we provide a comprehensive numerical investigation of the magnetic properties and phase spectra of three types of spin-1/2 branched chains consisting of one, two and three side spins per unit block with intra-chain interaction and a uniform inter-chain interaction in the presence of an external magnetic field. In a specific magnetic field interval, the low-temperature magnetization of these chains shows a step-like behavior with a pronounced plateau depending on the strength and the type of intra-chain interaction being ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic. We demonstrate that when inter-chain interaction J1 is antiferromagnetic and intra-chain interaction J2 is ferromagnetic, the magnetization of the models manifests a smooth increase without a plateau, which is evidence of the existence of a Luttinger-like spin liquid phase before reaching its saturation value. On the other hand, when J1 is ferromagnetic and J2 is antiferromagnetic, the low-temperature magnetization of the chain with two branches shows an intermediate plateau at one-half of the saturation magnetization that breaks a quantum spin liquid phase into two regions. The magnetization of the chain with three branches exhibits two intermediate plateaus and two regions of a quantum spin liquid. We demonstrate that the chains with more than one side spin illustrate in their ground-state phase diagram a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition from a gapful phase to a gapless spin liquid phase.
We consider the interacting helical liquid system at the one-dimensional edge of a two-dimensional topological insulator, coupled to an external magnetic field and s-wave superconductor and map it to an XYZ spin chain system. This model undergoes quantum Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless (BKT) transition with two limiting conditions. We derive the renormalization group (RG) equations explicitly and also present the flow lines behavior. We also present the behavior of RG flow lines based on the exact solution. We observe that the physics of Majorana fermion zero modes and the gaped Ising-ferromagnetic phase, which appears in a different context. We observe that the evidence of gapless helical Luttinger liquid phase as a common non-topological quantum phase for both quantum BKT transitions. We explain analytically and physically that there is no Majorana-Ising transition. In the presence of chemical potential, the system shows the commensurate to incommensurate transition.
We perform a detailed study on the consequences of the nonsymmorphic symmetries in the Luttinger phase of the one-dimensional (1D) spin-
21 Kitaev-Heisenberg-Gamma model with an antiferromagnetic Kitaev interaction. Although the low-energy Hamiltonian has an emergent U(1) symmetry, the bosonization formulas for the spin operators contain ten nonuniversal coefficients which only respect the discrete nonsymmorphic symmetries and can be determined by our density matrix renormalization group simulations to a high degree of accuracy. Using the nonsymmorphic bosonization formulas, the response to weak magnetic field is analyzed, and the zigzag phase in the 2D Kitaev-Heisenberg-Gamma model is recovered by weakly coupling an infinite number of 1D chains. Furthermore, we find a line of critical points with an emergent
SU(2)1 conformal symmetry located on the boundary of the Luttinger liquid phase. Our work reveals the rich physics related to nonsymmorphic symmetries in strongly correlated quantum magnetic models, and demonstrates the usefulness of 1D analysis for understanding the 2D Kitaev physics.
We study a lattice realization of a Luttinger liquid interacting with quantum spins in terms of an antiferromagnetic
S=1∕2 Heisenberg chain, where each spin is also coupled to a $\ensuremath{\sigma}=1∕2$ Kondo spin degree of freedom. This model describes the low-energy spin dynamics in quasi-one-dimensional materials, where the electronic spins of the magnetic ions interact with those of impurities, nuclei, and possibly other spin species present in their environment. For large ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic Kondo interaction ${J}^{\ensuremath{'}}$, there are two phases corresponding to an effective spin-1 Heisenberg chain and a dimerized spin-
1∕2 ladder, respectively. For weak Kondo interaction, we establish that the Kondo interaction drives the system to a strong coupling regime. This suggests that ${J}^{\ensuremath{'}}=0$ is the only critical point in the system.