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arXiv:2605.10320 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Beyond Topological Invariants: Order Parameters from Dominant Fock-state Patterns

Tsz Hin Hui, Xiaodan Xia, Pedro D. Sacramento, Wing Chi Yu

cond-mat.othercond-mat.dis-nncond-mat.stat-mechcond-mat.str-elquant-phSubmitted May 11, 2026• Announced May 12, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We introduce a general scheme for constructing order parameters (OPs) by extracting generic patterns from the dominant Fock states of many-body ground states. While topological phases are traditionally characterized by non-local invariants, we demonstrate that our real-space OPs provide a more refined classification. In the extended Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, we show that the standard winding number is insufficient to fully distinguish all phases; our OPs reveal a hidden sub-structure where each topological sector splits into two distinct phases. Beyond identifying the phase boundaries, these OPs quantify the depth of a phase, and remain robust in characterizing transitions in disordered systems. Furthermore, our approach provides a practical finite-size diagnostic for the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in the interacting spin-1/2 XXZ model. The presented framework offers a broadly applicable tool for uncovering the phase diagrams of diverse interacting and non-interacting quantum many-body systems.

Comments
5 pages, 4 figures

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We introduce a general scheme for constructing order parameters (OPs) by extracting generic patterns from the dominant Fock states of many-body ground states. While topological phases are traditionally characterized by non-local invariants, we demonstrate that our real-space OPs provide a more refined classification. In the extended Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, we show that the standard winding number is insufficient to fully distinguish all phases; our OPs reveal a hidden sub-structure where each topological sector splits into two distinct phases. Beyond identifying the phase boundaries, these OPs quantify the depth of a phase, and remain robust in characterizing transitions in disordered systems. Furthermore, our approach provides a practical finite-size diagnostic for the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in the interacting spin-1/2 XXZ model. The presented framework offers a broadly applicable tool for uncovering the phase diagrams of diverse interacting and non-interacting quantum many-body systems.
The fundamental understanding of phases and their transitions has been a central theme in condensed matter physics. Until recently, it was largely believed that the Landau symmetry breaking principle was effective in distinguishing different phases of matter, with broken symmetries signaling the phase transition. But with the discovery of topological phases which are beyond the Landau symmetry breaking principle, the identification and classification of quantum phases at absolute zero has opened up new unexplored avenues thus leading to exciting theoretical discoveries further propelling technological advancement. Topological phases of matter are characterized by the notion of topological order and in this work we aim to explore and understand topological phases by introducing novel signatures which characterize topological order. 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To concretize the notion of topological to trivial phase transition in an open setting we turn to nonequilibrium phenomenon, for example: Directed Percolation, with the change in percolation rate driving a dynamical phase transition between absorbing and active states with the former being topologically ordered while the latter being topologically trivial. Additionally, we explore the notion of topological phase transitions between distinct topological phases obtained by varying underlying topology in an open setting, analogous to the closed setting discussed earlier. To summarize, we have introduced various mixed states which exhibit topological order and also an operational definition to quantify topological order applicable across multitude of scenarios. We extend the above operational definition to quantify and detect quantum phase transitions in the case of Symmetry Protected Topological (SPT) phases. To further validate the above notion, we consider the perturbed variants of the Su-Schrieffer–Heeger (SSH) models and detect quantum phase transitions to a high accuracy by employing the techniques from the framework of tensor networks. It is significant to note the distinction of the error correction algorithms applied earlier in the case of intrinsic topological order were independent of symmetry constraints while in the current scenario we impose additional symmetry constraints to accurately detect the phase transition. In addition, we also devise error correction strategies with respect to topologically trivial states to detect quantum phase transitions which do not involve topological phases. This gives rise to a very fundamental question on whether error correction statistics with a well defined error correction algorithm, not necessarily optimal, are capable of detecting a equivalence classes of phases and thereby acting as a reliable probe to effectively detect topological/quantum phase transitions? From theoretical and numerical end of the spectrum we shift gears to explore possible experimental platforms with an aim to realize some of the quantum many-body phenomenon discussed earlier. While there have been several innovative experimental avenues to realize the above, one such promising candidate has been ultracold polar molecules setups that offer additional degrees of freedom due to the ro-vibrational degrees of freedom. 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It was proposed recently by some of the authors that the quantum phase transition of a topological insulator like the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model may be detected by the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the reduced density matrix. Here we further extend the scheme of identifying the order parameters by considering the SSH model with the addition of triplet superconductivity. This model has a rich phase diagram due to the competition of the SSH ``order'' and the Kitaev ``order,'' which requires the introduction of four order parameters to describe the various topological phases. We show how these order parameters can be expressed simply as averages of projection operators on the ground state at certain points deep in each phase and how one can simply obtain the phase boundaries. A scaling analysis in the vicinity of the transition lines is consistent with the quantum Ising universality class.
We establish a quantitative bulk-boundary correspondence in interacting topological insulators by relating many-body topological invariants to characteristic degeneracy structures in the entanglement spectrum. Focusing on generalized Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chains with higher winding number, we construct a gauge-invariant many-body winding invariant based on Pancharatnam geometric phases that remains well defined in the presence of interactions. We show that this invariant uniquely determines the low-lying entanglement-spectrum degeneracy, which exhibits a universal 4ν4^ν4ν scaling with the winding number ννν, providing a concrete formulation of bulk-boundary correspondence beyond single-particle topology. Using exact diagonalization, we demonstrate the robustness of this correspondence under interactions and symmetry-preserving disorder, and identify inversion symmetry as a minimal protecting symmetry that stabilizes both the quantization of the invariant and the associated entanglement degeneracies. Our results unify geometric-phase invariants and entanglement diagnostics within a many-body framework and provide a route to identifying interacting topological phases beyond band theory.
Topological phases have greatly improved our understanding of modern conception of phases of matter that go beyond the paradigm of symmetry breaking and are not described by local order parameters. Instead, characterization of topological phases requires the robust topological invariants, whereas measuring these global quantities presents an outstanding challenge for experiments, especially in interacting systems. Here we report the real-space observation of a symmetry-protected topological phase with interacting nuclear spins, and probe the interaction-induced transition between two topologically distinct phases, both of which are classified by many-body Chern numbers obtained from the dynamical response to the external magnetic fields. The resulting value of Chern number (Chˉ=1.958±0.070\bar{\mathcal{C}h} = 1.958 \pm 0.070Chˉ=1.958±0.070) demonstrates the robust ground state degeneracy, and also determines the number of nontrivial edge states. Our findings enable direct characterization of topological features of quantum many-body states through gradually decreasing the strength of the introduced external fields.
Topological insulators have attracted numerous attentions recent years, where the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model is one of the most studied models. While the interacting version of it has been explored recently, the interplay between interactions and long-range hoppings merit further investigations. In this work, we uncover a rich phase diagram of the interacting SSH model with extended-range hoppings, in which it consists of several topological phases, two novel superconducting-like (SC-like) phases and five distinct charge-density-wave (CDW) phases. We substantiate that the SC-like and two CDW phases are direct consequences of imbalanced interactions and extended-range hoppings. We derive the order parameters (OPs) for each of the phases and verify them in large-system simulations, finding consistency with the entanglement entropy and the fidelity in capturing the phase transitions. In contrast to the non-interacting case where the favored hoppings are unidirectional in the topological phases, the derived OPs suggest non-unidirectional hoppings are possible under the influence of interactions.