Measuring charge fluctuations within a subregion provides a powerful probe of quantum many-body systems. In two spatial dimensions, the shape dependence of the dimensionless corner contribution encodes universal data of quantum critical points and reveals observables of quantum geometry in various quantum phases. Here, we systematically extend this framework to higher dimensions. In three dimensions, we derive the universal angle dependence associated with trihedral corners of a generic parallelepiped and benchmark the predictions against Monte Carlo simulations of lattice models at the O(3) quantum critical point. We further identify a wedge-corner contribution that directly probes the quantum metric, supported by numerical results for a lattice Weyl semimetal model. More generally, we obtain angle functions for polyhedral corners of arbitrary parallelotopes in general dimensions and clarify the scaling of the corner contribution across phases of matter. While insulators and conformal critical points exhibit similar behavior across dimensions, metals display a characteristic even-odd dimensional effect.
Measuring charge fluctuations within a subregion provides a powerful probe of quantum many-body systems. In two spatial dimensions, the shape dependence of the dimensionless corner contribution encodes universal data of quantum critical points and reveals observables of quantum geometry in various quantum phases. Here, we systematically extend this framework to higher dimensions. In three dimensions, we derive the universal angle dependence associated with trihedral corners of a generic parallelepiped and benchmark the predictions against Monte Carlo simulations of lattice models at the O(3) quantum critical point. We further identify a wedge-corner contribution that directly probes the quantum metric, supported by numerical results for a lattice Weyl semimetal model. More generally, we obtain angle functions for polyhedral corners of arbitrary parallelotopes in general dimensions and clarify the scaling of the corner contribution across phases of matter. While insulators and conformal critical points exhibit similar behavior across dimensions, metals display a characteristic even-odd dimensional effect.
Measuring bipartite fluctuations of a conserved charge, such as the particle number, is a powerful approach to understanding quantum systems. When the measured region has sharp corners, the bipartite fluctuation receives an additional contribution known to exhibit a universal angle dependence in 2D isotropic and uniform systems. Here we establish that, for generic lattice systems of interacting particles, the corner charge fluctuation is directly related to quantum geometry. We first provide a practical scheme to isolate the corner contribution on lattices and analytically prove that its angle dependence in the "small-angle limit" measures exclusively the integrated quantum metric. A model of a compact obstructed atomic insulator is introduced to illustrate this effect analytically, while numerical verification for various Chern insulator models further demonstrate the experimental relevance of the corner charge fluctuation in a finite-size quantum simulator as a probe of quantum geometry. Last but not least, for free fermions, we unveil an intimate connection between quantum geometry and quantum information through the lens of corner entanglement entropies.
The disorder operator, as an easily measured nonlocal observable, displays great potential in detecting intrinsic information of field theories. It has been systematically studied in one- and two-dimensional (1D and 2D) quantum systems, while the knowledge of 3D is still limited. The disorder operator associated with U(1) global symmetry exhibits rich geometric dependence on the shape of the spatial region at a quantum critical point, meanwhile, (3+1)D is the upper critical dimension for O(N) criticality, both of which pose a challenge for exploring the disorder operator in high dimensions. In this Letter, we investigate the scaling behaviors of disorder operators in (3+1)D O(3) models through large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulation combined with theoretical analysis. Although the upper critical dimension introduces logarithmic corrections in correlations, we analytically prove and numerically demonstrate that the corrections do not modify the universal trihedral-corner contribution of the disorder operator. The universal contributions, such as the current central charge, have been revealed in our calculation, which establishes a concrete link between lattice simulations and continuum field theory. This work opens promising directions for the experimental and numerical exploration of universal properties at quantum critical points in (3+1)D models.
Understanding the fluctuations of observables is one of the main goals in science, be it theoretical or experimental, quantum or classical. We investigate such fluctuations in a subregion of the full system, focusing on geometries with sharp corners. We report that the angle dependence is super-universal: up to a numerical prefactor, this function does not depend on anything, provided the system under study is uniform, isotropic, and correlations do not decay too slowly. The prefactor contains important physical information: we show in particular that it gives access to the long-wavelength limit of the structure factor. We exemplify our findings with fractional quantum Hall states, topological insulators, scale invariant quantum critical theories, and metals. We suggest experimental tests, and anticipate that our findings can be generalized to other spatial dimensions or geometries. In addition, we highlight the similarities of the fluctuation shape dependence with findings relating to quantum entanglement measures.
The subleading corner logarithmic corrections in entanglement entropy (EE) are crucial for revealing the universal characteristics of quantum critical points (QCPs), but they are challenging to detect. Motivated by recent developments in the stable computation of EE in (2+1)-dimensional [(2+1)D] quantum many-body systems, we have developed a method for directly measuring the corner contribution in EE with lower computational cost. The cornerstone of our approach is to measure the subtracted corner entanglement entropy (SCEE), defined as the difference between the EEs of subregions with the same boundary length for smooth and cornered boundaries during a sign-problem-free quantum Monte Carlo simulation. Our improved method inherently eliminates not only the area-law term of EE but also the subleading log corrections arising from Goldstone modes, leaving the universal corner contribution as the leading term of the SCEE with greatly improved data quality. Utilizing this advanced approach, we calculate the SCEE of the bilayer Heisenberg model on both square and honeycomb lattices across their (2+1)D O(3) QCPs with different opening angles on the entanglement boundary and obtain accurate values of the corresponding universal corner log coefficients. These findings will encourage further theoretical investigations to access controlled universal information for interacting conformal field theories at (2+1) dimensions.
Entanglement scaling provides a powerful probe of universal properties at quantum critical points. In two dimensions, contributions originating from a corner-shaped bipartition exhibit a universal scaling, which is determined by the underlying conformal field theory. We develop a method to extract this corner entanglement entropy from projected entangled pair states directly in the thermodynamic limit. When applied to models at a quantum critical point, we show that the corner contribution exhibits scaling with the effective correlation length, in agreement with the hypothesis of finite-entanglement scaling. Our results for the corner coefficients are consistent with other methods, demonstrating the efficiency of our method for diagnosing strongly-correlated quantum critical points in two dimensions.
Fluctuations of conserved quantities within a subsystem are nonlocal observables that provide unique insights into quantum many-body systems. In this paper, we study bipartite charge (and spin) fluctuations across interaction-driven “metal-insulator transitions” out of Landau Fermi liquids. The “charge insulators” include a class of non-Fermi-liquid states of fractionalized degrees of freedom, such as compressible composite Fermi liquids (for spinless electrons) and incompressible spin-liquid Mott insulators (for spin- 1 / 2 electrons). We find that charge fluctuations F exhibit distinct leading-order scalings across the transition: F ∼ L log ( L ) in Landau Fermi liquids and F ∼ L in charge insulators, where L is the linear size of the subsystem. In composite Fermi liquids, under certain conditions, we also identify a universal constant term − f ( θ ) | σ x y | / ( 2 π ) when the subsystem geometry contains a sharp corner, where f ( θ ) denotes a function of the corner angle and σ x y is the Hall conductivity. At the critical point, provided the transition is continuous, the leading scaling F ∼ L is accompanied by a subleading universal corner contribution − log ( L ) f ( θ ) C ρ / 2 with the same angle dependence f ( θ ) , and the universal coefficient C ρ is directly related to the predicted universal jumps in longitudinal and Hall resistivities. These results establish fluctuation-transport relations, paving the way for numerical and experimental studies of unconventional quantum criticalities in metals.