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arXiv:2512.15537 · Physical Review Letters

Anomalous Dynamical Scaling at Topological Quantum Criticality

Menghua Deng, Chen Sun, Fuxiang Li, Xue-Jia Yu

cond-mat.str-elcond-mat.stat-mechquant-phSubmitted Dec 17, 2025• Announced Dec 18, 2025• 0 citations
v1 · Dec 17, 2025v2 · Apr 18, 2026
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Abstract

We study the nonequilibrium driven dynamics at topologically nontrivial quantum critical points (QCPs),and find that topological edge modes at criticality give rise to anomalous universal dynamical scaling behavior. By analyzing the driven dynamics of bulk and boundary order parameters at topologically distinct Ising QCPs, we demonstrate that, while the bulk dynamics remain indistinguishable and follow standard Kibble Zurek (KZ) scaling, the anomalous boundary dynamics is unique to topological criticality, and its explanation goes beyond the traditional KZ mechanism. To elucidate the unified origin of this anomaly, we further study the dynamics of defect production at topologically distinct QCPs in free-fermion models and demonstrate similar anomalous universal scaling exclusive to topological criticality. These findings establish the existence of anomalous dynamical scaling arising from the interplay between topology and driven dynamics, challenging standard paradigms of quantum critical dynamics.

Journal reference
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 096605 (2026)
DOI
10.1103/mqr4-wnny
Comments
5 + 13 pages, 11 figures. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated !

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We study the nonequilibrium driven dynamics at topologically nontrivial quantum critical points (QCPs),and find that topological edge modes at criticality give rise to anomalous universal dynamical scaling behavior. By analyzing the driven dynamics of bulk and boundary order parameters at topologically distinct Ising QCPs, we demonstrate that, while the bulk dynamics remain indistinguishable and follow standard Kibble Zurek (KZ) scaling, the anomalous boundary dynamics is unique to topological criticality, and its explanation goes beyond the traditional KZ mechanism. To elucidate the unified origin of this anomaly, we further study the dynamics of defect production at topologically distinct QCPs in free-fermion models and demonstrate similar anomalous universal scaling exclusive to topological criticality. These findings establish the existence of anomalous dynamical scaling arising from the interplay between topology and driven dynamics, challenging standard paradigms of quantum critical dynamics.
The Kibble-Zurek mechanism predicts a universal scaling behavior of the defect production when a system is slowly quenched across a critical phase transition point. Here, we discover that the universal scaling behavior across a higher-order topological phase transition does not conform to the traditional Kibble-Zurek mechanism. To explain the anomalous scaling exponent, we develop a solvable Landau-Zener model that takes into account the role of topological edge band that dominates the phase transition. For a two-dimensional boundary-obstructed higher-order topological system, the Kibble-Zurek scaling must be modified to adopt the effective dimension of topological edge band instead of the real physical dimension. We also find that across the boundary-obstructed higher-order topological phase transition, boundary conditions can drastically modify the scaling behaviors. For comparison, we investigate the slow quench dynamics across the bulk-obstructed phase transitions and a single multicritical point, which obeys the Kibble-Zurek mechanism with physical dimension.
We study the influence of topology on the quench dynamics of a system driven across a quantum critical point. We show how the appearance of certain edge states, which fully characterize the topology of the system, dramatically modifies the process of defect production during the crossing of the critical point. Interestingly enough, the density of defects is no longer described by the Kibble-Zurek scaling, but determined instead by the nonuniversal topological features of the system. Edge states are shown to be robust against defect production, which highlights their topological nature.
When a system is swept through a quantum critical point (QCP), the Kibble-Zurek mechanism predicts that the average number of topological defects follows a universal power-law scaling with the ramp time scale. This scaling behavior is determined by the equilibrium critical exponents of the underlying phase transition. We show that the correspondence between Kibble-Zurek scaling and quantum criticality does not hold generally. In particular, the defect density can exhibit a suppression faster than the Kibble-Zurek prediction even when the quench crosses a critical point, while conventional Kibble-Zurek scaling may persist for quenches through a non-critical point. Our results, based on models representative of a broad class of quasi-one-dimensional Fermi systems, identify the dynamical conditions under which universal defect scaling emerges and clarify the relation between defect generation and equilibrium criticality.
We study the driven dynamics across the critical points of the Yang-Lee edge singularities (YLESs) in a finite-size quantum Ising chain with an imaginary symmetry-breaking field. In contrast to the conventional classical or quantum phase transitions, these phase transitions are induced by tuning the strength of the dissipation in a non-Hermitian system and can occur even at finite size. For conventional phase transitions, universal behaviors in driven dynamics across critical points are usually described by the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, which states that the scaling in dynamics is dictated by the critical exponents associated with one critical point and topological defects will emerge after the quench. While the mechanism leading to topological defects breaks down in the YLES, we find that for small lattice size, the driven dynamics can still be described by the Kibble-Zurek scaling with the exponents determined by the (0+1)-dimensional YLES. For medium finite size, however, the driven dynamics can be described by the Kibble-Zurek scaling with two sets of critical exponents determined by both the (0+1)-dimensional and the (1+1)-dimensional YLESs.
Proposed as an elegant symmetry relating bosons and fermions, spacetime supersymmetry (SUSY) has been actively pursued in both particle physics and emergent phenomena in quantum critical points (QCP) of topological quantum materials. However, how SUSY casts the light on nonequilibrium dynamics remains open. In this letter, we investigate the Kibble-Zurek dynamics across a QCP with emergent N=2\mathcal{N}=2N=2 spacetime SUSY between the Dirac semimetal and a superconductor through large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulation. The scaling behaviors in the whole driven process are uncovered to satisfy the full finite-time scaling (FTS) forms. More crucially, we demonstrate that the emergent SUSY manifests in the intimate relation between the FTS behaviors of fermionic and bosonic observables, namely the fermions and bosons acquire the identical anomalous dimensions. Our work not only brings a fundamental new ingredient into the critical theory with SUSY, but also provide the theoretical guidance to experimental detect of QCP with emergent SUSY from the perspectives of Kibble-Zurek mechanism and FTS.
We analyze mechanisms for universal out-of-equilibrium dynamics near criticality by exploring the effect of randomized quantum resetting (QR) under a finite-time quench across a quantum phase transition. Using the transverse-field Ising chain as a generic model and exploiting its exact solution, QR is found to cause a crossover of the scaling of the topological defect density with the time scale τττ of the quench, from Kibble-Zurek to anti-Kibble-Zurek scaling as τττ increases. This reflects a competition between non-adiabatic quench-driven excitations and QR, giving rise to local minima of the defect densities at optimal annealing times. These times and the corresponding local minima are shown to scale as universal power laws with the rate of QR. Additional results for the scaling of the mean excess energy suggest that a system driven across a quantum critical point exhibits the same scaling behavior under a linear quench with QR as with uncorrelated noise.