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Physical review. B, Condensed matter

Critical behavior of random transverse-field Ising spin chains

Daniel S. Fisher

Published Mar 1, 1995• 828 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A real-space renormalization-group treatment of random transverse-field Ising spin chains that was introduced previously is developed and extensively analyzed. It yields results that are asymptotically exact in the critical region near the zero-temperature para-to-ferromagnetic quantum phase transition. In particular, the exact scaling function is obtained for the magnetization as a function of a uniform applied magnetic field and the distance to the critical point, and up to the solution of a linear ordinary differential equation whose solution can be exhaustively analyzed, the scaling function of the average spin-spin correlation function is also obtained. Thus more exact information is obtainable about the critical behavior for this random model than is known for the pure version which is equivalent to the two-dimensional Ising model. The basic reason for this is the extremely broad distribution of energy scales that occurs at low energies near the critical point of the random system. For the random chain the distribution of the magnetization of the first spin in a semi-infinite system is also studied and the results found to agree in the scaling limit with results of McCoy obtained from the exact solution of the closely related McCoy-Wu Ising model; this provides strong justification for the validity of the present approach. The singular properties of the weakly ordered and weakly disordered ``Griffiths' phases'' that occur at zero temperature near the critical point are also studied, as well as the behavior at low but nonzero temperature. Possible extensions of the results and general lessons drawn from them for other random systems are briefly discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.51.6411

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A real-space renormalization-group treatment of random transverse-field Ising spin chains that was introduced previously is developed and extensively analyzed. It yields results that are asymptotically exact in the critical region near the zero-temperature para-to-ferromagnetic quantum phase transition. In particular, the exact scaling function is obtained for the magnetization as a function of a uniform applied magnetic field and the distance to the critical point, and up to the solution of a linear ordinary differential equation whose solution can be exhaustively analyzed, the scaling function of the average spin-spin correlation function is also obtained. Thus more exact information is obtainable about the critical behavior for this random model than is known for the pure version which is equivalent to the two-dimensional Ising model. The basic reason for this is the extremely broad distribution of energy scales that occurs at low energies near the critical point of the random system. For the random chain the distribution of the magnetization of the first spin in a semi-infinite system is also studied and the results found to agree in the scaling limit with results of McCoy obtained from the exact solution of the closely related McCoy-Wu Ising model; this provides strong justification for the validity of the present approach. The singular properties of the weakly ordered and weakly disordered ``Griffiths' phases'' that occur at zero temperature near the critical point are also studied, as well as the behavior at low but nonzero temperature. Possible extensions of the results and general lessons drawn from them for other random systems are briefly discussed.
Fisher's [Phys. Rev. B 51,51,51, 6411 (1995)] real-space renormalization-group (RG) treatment of random transverse-field Ising spin chains is extended into the strongly ordered and strongly disordered Griffiths phases, and asymptotically exact results are obtained. In the noncritical region the asymmetry of the renormalization of the couplings and the transverse fields is related to a nonlinear quantum control parameter \ensuremath{\Delta}, which is a natural measure of the distance from the quantum critical point. \ensuremath{\Delta}, which is found to stay invariant along the RG trajectories, and has been expressed by the initial disorder distributions, stands in the singularity exponents of different physical quantities (magnetization, susceptibility, specific heat, etc.), which are exactly calculated. In this way we have observed a weak-universality scenario: the Griffiths-McCoy singularities do not depend on the form of the disorder, provided the nonlinear quantum control parameter has the same value. The exact scaling function of the magnetization with a small applied magnetic field is calculated, and the critical point magnetization singularity is determined in a simple, direct way.
We study the critical and off-critical (Griffiths-McCoy) regions of the random transverse-field Ising spin chain by analytical and numerical methods and by phenomenological scaling considerations. Here we extend previous investigations to surface quantities and to the ferromagnetic phase. The surface magnetization of the model is shown to be related to the surviving probability of an adsorbing walk and several critical exponents are exactly calculated. Analyzing the structure of low-energy excitations we present a phenomenological theory which explains both the scaling behavior at the critical point and the nature of Griffiths-McCoy singularities in the off-critical regions. In the numerical part of the work we used the free-fermion representation of the model and calculated the critical magnetization profiles, which are found to follow very accurately the conformal predictions for different boundary conditions. In the off-critical regions we demonstrated that the Griffiths-McCoy singularities are characterized by a single, varying exponent, the value of which is related through duality in the paramagnetic and ferromagnetic phases.
The Ma-Dasgupta-Hu renormalization group (RG) scheme is used to study singular quantities in the Griffiths phase of random quantum spin chains. For the random transverse-field Ising spin chain we have extended Fisher's analytical solution to the off-critical region and calculated the dynamical exponent exactly. Concerning other random chains we argue by scaling considerations that the RG method generally becomes asymptotically exact for large times, both at the critical point and in the whole Griffiths phase. This statement is checked via numerical calculations on the random Heisenberg and quantum Potts models by the density matrix renormalization group method.
Dynamical correlations of the spin and the energy density are investigated in the critical region of the random transverse-field Ising chain by numerically exact calculations in large finite systems (L ≤ 128). The spin-spin autocorrelation function is found to decay proportional to (log t) −2xm and (log t) −2xs m in the bulk and on the surface, respectively, with xm and x s m the bulk and surface magnetization exponents, respectively. On the other hand the critical energy-energy autocorrelation functions have a power law decay, which are characterized by novel critical exponents ηe ≈ 2.2 in the bulk and η s e ≈ 2.5 at the surface, respectively. The numerical results are compared with the predictions of a scaling theory. 05.50.+q, 64.60.Ak, 68.35.Rh Typeset using REVTEX 1 The asymptotic behavior of the time-dependent correlation functions for interacting many-body systems turned out a very difficult subject of theoretical research. Exact results in this field are scarce, one can mention the one-dimensional spin 1/2 XY-model [1] and the Ising chain in a transverse-field [2]. Both models can be mapped onto a system of non-interacting fermions, where the equal-position correlation functions are calculated by the Pfaffian method utilizing the theory of Töplitz determinants. In this Letter we consider- at the first time- the critical dynamical correlations of an interacting quantum system in the presence of quenched (i.e. time-dependent) disorder. It has recently become clear that quenched disorder has rather different effects on phase transitions in quantum systems [3] than on those thermally driven phase transitions. For example, in the Griffiths phase, which is situated at the disordered side of the critical point, the susceptibility has an essential singularity in classical systems, whereas in a quantum system the corresponding singularity is stronger, it is in a power law form. Here we consider the prototype of random quantum systems the one-dimensional random transverse-field Ising model defined by the Hamiltonian:
The nonequilibrium dynamics of classical random Ising spin chains with nonconserved magnetization are studied using an asymptotically exact real space renormalization group (RSRG). We focus on random field Ising model (RFIM) spin chains with and without a uniform applied field, as well as on Ising spin glass chains in an applied field. For the RFIM we consider a universal regime where the random field and the temperature are both much smaller than the exchange coupling. In this regime, the Imry-Ma length that sets the scale of the equilibrium correlations is large and the coarsening of domains from random initial conditions (e.g., a quench from high temperature) occurs over a wide range of length scales. The two types of domain walls that occur diffuse in opposite random potentials, of the form studied by Sinai, and domain walls annihilate when they meet. Using the RSRG we compute many universal asymptotic properties of both the nonequilibrium dynamics and the equilibrium limit. We find that the configurations of the domain walls converge rapidly toward a set of system-specific time-dependent positions that are independent of the initial conditions. Thus the behavior of this nonequilibrium system is pseudodeterministic at long times because of the broad distributions of barriers that occur on the long length scales involved. Specifically, we obtain the time dependence of the energy, the magnetization, and the distribution of domain sizes (found to be statistically independent). The equilibrium limits agree with known exact results. We obtain the exact scaling form of the two-point equal time correlation function <S0(t)Sx(t)> and the two-time autocorrelations <S0(t('))S0(t)>. We also compute the persistence properties of a single spin, of local magnetization, and of domains. The analogous quantities for the +/-J Ising spin glass in an applied field are obtained from the RFIM via a gauge transformation. In addition to these we compute the two-point two-time correlation function <S0(t)Sx(t)><S0(t('))Sx(t('))> which can in principle be measured by experiments on spin-glass-like systems. The thermal fluctuations are studied and found to be dominated by rare events; in particular all moments of truncated equal time correlations are computed. Physical properties which are typically measured in aging experiments are also studied, focusing on the response to a small magnetic field which is applied after waiting for the system to equilibrate for a time t(w). The nonequilibrium fluctuation-dissipation ratio X(t,t(w)) is computed. We find that for (t-t(w)) approximately t(alpha)(w) with alpha;<1, the ratio equal to its equilibrium value X=1, although time translational invariance does not hold in this regime. For t-t(w) approximately t(w) the ratio exhibits an aging regime with a nontrivial X=X(t/t(w)) not equal to 1, but the behavior is markedly different from mean field theory. Finally the distribution of the total magnetization and of the number of domains is computed for large finite size systems. General issues about convergence toward equilibrium and the possibilities of weakly history-dependent evolution in other random systems are discussed.
We study numerically the paramagnetic phase of the spin-1/21/21/2 random transverse-field Ising chain, using a mapping to noninteracting fermions. We extend our earlier work, Phys. Rev. B 53, 8486 (1996), to finite temperatures and to dynamical properties. Our results are consistent with the idea that there are Griffiths-McCoy singularities in the paramagnetic phase described by a continuously varying exponent $z(\ensuremath{\delta}),$ where \ensuremath{\delta} measures the deviation from criticality. There are some discrepancies between the values of $z(\ensuremath{\delta})$ obtained from different quantities, but this may be due to corrections to scaling. The average on-site time dependent correlation function decays with a power law in the paramagnetic phase, namely, ${\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}1/z(\ensuremath{\delta})},$ where \ensuremath{\tau} is imaginary time. However, the typical value decays with a stretched exponential behavior, $\mathrm{exp}(\ensuremath{-}c{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{1/\ensuremath{\mu}}),$ where \ensuremath{\mu} may be related to $z(\ensuremath{\delta}).$ We also obtain results for the full probability distribution of time dependent correlation functions at different points in the paramagnetic phase.