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arXiv:2604.25837

Restoration of Ensemble Equivalence by Quantum Fluctuations

Alessandro Campa, Andrea Trombettoni

Published Apr 28, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We study the thermodynamic phase diagram of a one-dimensional quantum spin chain subjected to both mean-field and nearest-neighbor interactions, and to a transverse magnetic field $h$. The purpose is to determine the effect of the quantum fluctuations, due to the transverse field, on the phase diagram, in particular with respect to the occurrence of ensemble inequivalence. We denote our model as a quantum Nagle-Kardar model. To perform the calculation of the canonical partition function, we show that, due to the presence of the mean-field term, in the thermodynamic limit one can use the Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation in spite of the non-commutativity of the different operators appearing in the Hamiltonian, and we adopt a procedure of successive approximations that lead to the determination of the phase diagram thanks to a scaling property of the phase transition lines. The results show that the ensemble inequivalence, present in the classical Nagle-Kardar model, is removed above a threshold value $h_c$ for the transverse field. For $h$ larger than $h_c$ the phase diagram exhibits only second-order phase transition lines, implying therefore restoration of ensemble equivalence.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2604.25837

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We study the thermodynamic phase diagram of a one-dimensional quantum spin chain subjected to both mean-field and nearest-neighbor interactions, and to a transverse magnetic field hhh. The purpose is to determine the effect of the quantum fluctuations, due to the transverse field, on the phase diagram, in particular with respect to the occurrence of ensemble inequivalence. We denote our model as a quantum Nagle-Kardar model. To perform the calculation of the canonical partition function, we show that, due to the presence of the mean-field term, in the thermodynamic limit one can use the Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation in spite of the non-commutativity of the different operators appearing in the Hamiltonian, and we adopt a procedure of successive approximations that lead to the determination of the phase diagram thanks to a scaling property of the phase transition lines. The results show that the ensemble inequivalence, present in the classical Nagle-Kardar model, is removed above a threshold value hch_chc​ for the transverse field. For hhh larger than hch_chc​ the phase diagram exhibits only second-order phase transition lines, implying therefore restoration of ensemble equivalence.
Phase transitions for an open system consisting of an ensemble of interacting quantum subsystems with discrete spectrum are studied in the mean-field approximation. In the considered model, the change of an internal symmetry of a thermodynamic system upon the second-order phase transition is due to changing symmetry of distribution of charge/spin density inside each quantum subsystem. The latter can be caused by either splitting of one of lowest degenerated energy level or closing a gap between the levels and appearance of avoided crossing. The effect of external parameters (pressure, field, composition, etc.) results in direct change of internal control parameters: level spacing and/or the strength of interaction between adjacent quantum subsystems. Considering a simplest case of the two-level quantum subsystems, expressions for the free energy as a function of the internal control parameters were obtained in analytical form. The behavior of the heat capacity and susceptibility for different regions of the low-temperature phase diagram including the area of quantum fluctuations was determined.
Abstract We study the effect of competing interactions on ensemble inequivalence. We consider a one-dimensional Ising model with ferromagnetic mean-field interactions and short-range nearest-neighbor (NN) and next-NN couplings which can be either ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic. Despite the relative simplicity of the model, our calculations in the microcanonical ensemble reveal a rich phase diagram. The comparison with the corresponding phase diagram in the canonical ensemble shows the presence of phase transition points and lines which are different in the two ensembles. As an example, in a region of the phase diagram where the canonical ensemble shows a critical point and a critical end point, the microcanonical ensemble has an additional critical point and also a triple point. The regions of ensemble inequivalence typically occur at lower temperatures and at larger absolute values of the competing couplings. The presence of two free parameters in the model allows us to obtain a fourth-order critical point, which can be fully characterized by deriving its Landau normal form.
We apply a finite-size scaling approach to the one-dimensional spin-1/21/21/2 Ising model with nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor interactions in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. By using the scaling behavior of the energy gap we are able not only to determine the ferromagnetic-paramagnetic transition line at zero absolute temperature but also to compute the corresponding critical exponent. A comparison with other approaches is made, and aside for small discrepancies likely to occur at the thermodynamic limit, we believe that the present results are quite close to the unknown exact ones.
We face the problem of detecting and featuring footprints of quantum criticality in the finite-temperature behavior of quantum many-body systems. Our strategy is that of comparing the phase diagram of a system displaying a T=0T=0T=0 quantum phase transition with that of its classical limit, in order to single out the genuinely quantum effects. To this aim, we consider the one-dimensional Ising model in a transverse field: while the quantum S=1∕2S=1∕2S=1∕2 Ising chain is exactly solvable and extensively studied, results for the classical limit $(S\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty})$ of such model are lacking, and we supply them here. They are obtained numerically, via the transfer-matrix method, and their asymptotic low-temperature behavior is also derived analytically by self-consistent spin-wave theory. We draw the classical phase diagram according to the same procedure followed in the quantum analysis, and the two phase diagrams are found unexpectedly similar: Three regimes are detected also in the classical case, each characterized by a functional dependence of the correlation length on temperature and field analogous to that of the quantum model. What discriminates the classical from the quantum case are the different values of the exponents entering such dependencies, a consequence of the different nature of zero-temperature quantum fluctuations with respect to the thermal ones.
We analytically investigated the phase diagrams of one-dimensional Ising and XY models. A second-order phase transition occurs in both models only with the transverse magnetic field. In this study, the fully connected ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic XX interactions are applied in addition to the transverse magnetic field. The ferromagnetic XX interaction causes a first-order phase transition in both of the one-dimensional Ising and XY models. In contrast, by applying the anti-ferromagnetic one, the second-order phase transition can be avoided in the one-dimensional Ising model, and the critical amplitude becomes smaller in the one-dimensional XY model even though the second-order phase transition remains and the critical exponent does not change. Because the anti-ferromagnetic XX interaction works to destroy the order of the transverse magnetization, it begins to decrease at a larger strength of the transverse magnetic field. As a result, the susceptibility of the transverse magnetization with respect to the strength of the magnetic field becomes small. It is conjectured that the anti-ferromagnetic XX interaction is generally preferable to the ferromagnetic interaction to improve the performance of quantum annealing.
The statistical thermodynamics of the quantum spin- s XXZ Heisenberg model in the Weiss (mean-field) limit rests on the outer multiplicities of the irreducible representations in the Clebsch–Gordan decomposition of the n -fold spin- s tensor product, which determine the energy-level degeneracies and hence the partition function. Using known closed forms for these multiplicities in terms of generalized binomial coefficients of order 2 s + 1 , we write the exact finite-size partition function of the effective collective Hamiltonian and evaluate its thermodynamic limit by a large-deviation (Laplace) analysis validated against direct summations for systems of up to n = 10 4 spins. The free energy then follows from a two-parameter variational principle in the total spin and the magnetization per site. The ferromagnetic ordering is driven by the rotationally invariant part of the Hamiltonian, so that the Curie temperature T c = 1 3 J s ( s + 1 ) is independent of the anisotropy Δ, and the transition is of second order for every spin s , with classical mean-field exponents. The anisotropy reshapes the phase diagram: for Δ < 1 the field-driven first-order line of the isotropic ( Δ = 1 ) model opens into a dome of easy-plane ferromagnetic order, bounded by a continuous transition that restores the residual U(1) symmetry, and no first-order transitions or metastability occur throughout − 1 ≤ Δ < 1 ; the isotropic Curie-Weiss ferromagnet is recovered as Δ → 1. In two appendices we detail the asymptotics of the outer multiplicities down to the Gaussian-fluctuation prefactor and discuss the q -number and Jacobi-theta structures underlying the model, including the partial-theta-type structure that obstructs a standard theta-function reduction of the residual total-spin sum.