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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General

Finite-size scaling of the quantum Ising chain with periodic, free, and antiperiodic boundary conditions

Theodore W. Burkhardt, Ihnsouk Guim

Published Jan 11, 1985• 68 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The authors give exact results for the energy spectrum of a chain of N Ising spins in a transverse field with periodic, free, and antiperiodic boundary conditions. The dependence of the energy gaps on boundary conditions is compatible with predictions of conformal invariance for correlation lengths in two-dimensional strips. The feasibility of calculating surface critical indices using phenomenological renormalisation with free boundary conditions and the convergence for large N are discussed.

DOI
10.1088/0305-4470/18/1/006

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The authors give exact results for the energy spectrum of a chain of N Ising spins in a transverse field with periodic, free, and antiperiodic boundary conditions. The dependence of the energy gaps on boundary conditions is compatible with predictions of conformal invariance for correlation lengths in two-dimensional strips. The feasibility of calculating surface critical indices using phenomenological renormalisation with free boundary conditions and the convergence for large N are discussed.
The spectrum of the quantum Ising chain is studied in the finite-size scaling limit for periodic and antiperiodic boundary conditions. The finite-size corrections are computed for all energy gaps. The results of the model are used to test the Privman-Fisher universality hypothesis and conformal theory. At the critical point, it is shown how to build the spectrum from the irreducible representations of the Virasoro algebra. In addition, the author finds evidence for an unsuspected symmetry for systems both non-critical and of finite size.
According to finite-size scaling theory, the correlation length in an Ising strip with infinite length and a width of L lattice constants has the form ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{L}$(T)=Lf(c(T-Tc{T}_{c}Tc​)L) in the scaling regime L\ensuremath{\gg}1,\ensuremath{\Vert}T-Tc{T}_{c}Tc​\ensuremath{\Vert}/Tc{T}_{c}Tc​\ensuremath{\ll}1. Here f(x) is a universal scaling function, which does, however, depend on the boundary conditions at the edges of the strip. Utilizing the correspondence between the two-dimensional Ising model and the one-dimensional quantum Ising model in a transverse field, we calculate the explicit form of the function f(x) for spin-spin and energy-energy correlations in strips with periodic, free, fixed, and mixed free-fixed boundary conditions.
The low-energy excitation spectrum of an Ising quantum chain in a transverse field which is critical (h=J=1) for 1<or=n<or=L/2 and off-critical (h not=J) for L/2(n<or=L is calculated up to O(L -1 ). Interface critical exponents are determined numerically in the odd sector and exactly in the even sector using finite-size scaling. One gets an ordinary surface transition when h)J and an extraordinary surface transition when h(J. The gap-exponent relation is verified, the mass gaps and the level degeneracy are in agreement with conformal invariance.
Anisotropy effects on the finite-size critical behavior of a two-dimensional Ising model on a general triangular lattice in an infinite-strip geometry with periodic, antiperiodic, and free boundary conditions (bc) in the finite direction are investigated. Exact results are obtained for the scaling functions of the finite-size contributions to the free energy density. With ξ(>) the largest and ξ(<) the smallest bulk correlation length at a given temperature near criticality, we find that the dependence of these functions on the ratio ξ(<)/ξ(>) and on the angle parametrizing the orientation of the correlation volume is of geometric nature. Since the scaling functions are independent of the particular microscopic realization of the anisotropy within the two-dimensional Ising model, our results provide a limited verification of universality. We explain our observations by considering finite-size scaling of free energy densities of general weakly anisotropic models on a d-dimensional film (i.e., in an L×∞(d-1) geometry) with bc in the finite direction that are invariant under a shear transformation relating the anisotropic and isotropic cases. This allows us to relate free energy scaling functions in the presence of an anisotropy to those of the corresponding isotropic system. We interpret our results as a simple and transparent case of anisotropic universality, where, compared to the isotropic case, scaling functions depend additionally on the shape and orientation of the correlation volume. We conjecture that this universality extends to cases where the geometry and/or the bc are not invariant under the shear transformation and argue in favor of validity of two-scale factor universality for weakly anisotropic systems.
Using free-fermionic techniques we study the entanglement entropy of a block of contiguous spins in a large finite quantum Ising chain in a transverse field, with couplings of different types: homogeneous, periodically modulated and random. We carry out a systematic study of finite-size effects at the quantum critical point, and evaluate subleading corrections both for open and for periodic boundary conditions. For a block corresponding to a half of a finite chain, the position of the maximum of the entropy as a function of the control parameter (e.g. the transverse field) can define the effective critical point in the finite sample. On the basis of homogeneous chains, we demonstrate that the scaling behavior of the entropy near the quantum phase transition is in agreement with the universality hypothesis, and calculate the shift of the effective critical point, which has different scaling behaviors for open and for periodic boundary conditions.