For a system at absolute zero temperature, all thermal fluctuations are frozen out, while quantum fluctuations prevail.These microscopic quantum fluctuations can induce a quantum phase transition (QPT) in the ground state of a many-body system when the relative strength of two competing energy terms is varied across a critical value.This paper presents a detailed and quantitative study of the magnetic properties of Ising two-spin system at zero temperature in the presence of longitudinal, transverse and mixed fields, and also at finite temperatures.At the critical longitudinal magnetic field, the system is found to undergo a QPT to a ferromagnetic state.For this system, an infinitesimal departure from zero transverse field is found to trigger off QPT and also remove the degeneracies that persisted even in the presence of longitudinal field.These quantum fluctuations, leading to QPT are more evident in the mixed field than the separate effect of longitudinal and transverse fields.The observed quantum effects at zero temperature for this system are found to be completely wiped out at finite temperatures due to thermal fluctuations.A temperature increase favours antiferromagnetic alignment of spins, while a decrease in temperature favours ferromagnetic alignment.
For a system at absolute zero temperature, all thermal fluctuations are frozen out, while quantum fluctuations prevail.These microscopic quantum fluctuations can induce a quantum phase transition (QPT) in the ground state of a many-body system when the relative strength of two competing energy terms is varied across a critical value.This paper presents a detailed and quantitative study of the magnetic properties of Ising two-spin system at zero temperature in the presence of longitudinal, transverse and mixed fields, and also at finite temperatures.At the critical longitudinal magnetic field, the system is found to undergo a QPT to a ferromagnetic state.For this system, an infinitesimal departure from zero transverse field is found to trigger off QPT and also remove the degeneracies that persisted even in the presence of longitudinal field.These quantum fluctuations, leading to QPT are more evident in the mixed field than the separate effect of longitudinal and transverse fields.The observed quantum effects at zero temperature for this system are found to be completely wiped out at finite temperatures due to thermal fluctuations.A temperature increase favours antiferromagnetic alignment of spins, while a decrease in temperature favours ferromagnetic alignment.
The quantum Ising model is perhaps the simplest possible model of a quantum magnetic material. Despite its simplicity, its versatility and wide range of applications, from quantum computation, to combinatorial optimization, to biophysics, make it one of the most important models of modern physics. In this thesis, we develop a general framework for studying quantum Ising systems with an arbitrary single ion Hamiltonian, with emphasis on the effects of quantum fluctuations, and the quantum phase transition between paramagnetic and ferromagnetic states that occurs when a magnetic field is applied transverse to the easy axis of the system. The magnetic insulating crystal LiHoF₄ is a physical realization of the quantum Ising model, with the additional features that the dominant coupling between spins is the long range dipolar interaction, and each electronic spin is strongly coupled to a nuclear degree of freedom. These nuclear degrees of freedom constitute a spin bath environment acting on the system. In this thesis, we present an effective low temperature Hamiltonian for LiHoF₄ that incorporates both these features, and we analyze the effects of the nuclear spin bath on the system. We find the lowest energy crystal field excitation in the system is gapped at the quantum critical point by the presence of the nuclear spins, with spectral weight being transferred down to a lower energy electronuclear mode that fully softens to zero at the quantum critical point. Furthermore, we present a toy model, the spin half spin half model, that illustrates the effects of an anisotropic hyperfine interaction on a quantum Ising system. We find the critical transverse field is increased when the longitudinal hyperfine coupling is dominant, as well as an enhancement of both the longitudinal electronic susceptibility and an applied longitudinal field. In addition, we present a field theoretic formalism for incorporating the effects of fluctuations beyond the random phase approximation in general quantum Ising systems. We find that any regular on site interaction, such as a nuclear spin bath, does not fundamentally alter the critical properties of a quantum Ising system. This formalism is used to calculate corrections to the magnetization of LiHoF₄.
The transverse field Ising chain model is ideally suited for testing the fundamental ideas of quantum phase transitions because its well-known T ¼ 0 ground state can be extrapolated to finite temperatures.Nonetheless, the lack of appropriate model materials hindered the past effort to test the theoretical predictions.Here, we map the evolution of quantum fluctuations in the transverse field Ising chain based on nuclear magnetic resonance measurements of CoNb 2 O 6 , and we demonstrate the finite-temperature effects on quantum criticality for the first time.From the temperature dependence of the 93 Nb longitudinal relaxation rate 1=T 1 , we identify the renormalized classical, quantum critical, and quantum disordered scaling regimes in the temperature (T) vs transverse magnetic field (h ⊥ ) phase diagram.Precisely at the critical field h c ⊥ ¼ 5.25 Æ 0.15 T, we observe a power-law behavior, 1=T 1 ∼ T -3=4 , as predicted by quantum critical scaling.Our parameter-free comparison between the data and theory reveals that quantum fluctuations persist up to as high as T ∼ 0.4J, where the intrachain exchange interaction J is the only energy scale of the problem.
Quantum phase transitions occur at zero temperature upon variation of some nonthermal control parameters. The Ising chain in a transverse field is probably the most-studied model undergoing such a transition, from ferromagnetic to paramagnetic state1,2. This model can be exactly solved by using a Jordan-Wigner transformation, which transforms the spins into noninteracting spinless fermions1. At the quantum critical point, the magnetic excitations can carry arbitrarily low energy and dominate the low temperature properties. Here we report the unveiling of such quantum critical point in quasi-one-dimensional Ising ferromagnet CoNb2O6 by ultra-low-temperature thermal conductivity measurements. We find that in the paramagnetic state, phonons are scattered by the magnetic excitations above certain temperature Ts, which corresponds to a gap. As predicted by the theoretical model1, this gap linearly goes to zero with decreasing the transverse field, thus determining the quantum critical point of the Ising chain.
Despite the fact that a complete theoretical description of critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions has been well established through the renormalization-group theory, the microscopic nature of the phase transitions remains to be understood in a satisfactory way. For example, how does the interaction between particle/spins drive the system across distinct phases as parameters vary, and how do these particle/spins respond to parameter variations during this transition process? In this work, we investigate these questions through the paradigmatic example of quantum phase transitions (QPT) in the one-dimensional transverse Ising model (TIM). We first introduce 2L collective structures, referred to as patterns, for the TIM with L ferromagnetically interacting spins, and then analyze the contributions of these patterns to the system's states, e.g., the ground state, the first excited state, and so on, from which the analog of the QPT process between the disordered phase in the weakly coupling regime and the ferromagnetic phase in the strongly coupling regime is clearly identified at the interaction strength J_{c}=1. We systematically explore this process for small lattice sizes of L=6,8,10,12, whose ground-state energies are identical to those obtained by directly numerical exact diagonalization. Increasing the system size up to L=128, the actual QPT point located at J_{c}=1 in the thermodynamical limit is gradually approached. Our results show that the pattern picture is not only able to provide a microscopic process of phase transitions, but also of practical interest in analyzing analogues of QPT in diverse quantum simulation platforms.
At zero temperature, thermal fluctuation is eliminated and phase transitions will occur due to quantum fluctuations that arise from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Magnetic insulators, described by the Heisenberg model Hamiltonian, are a known class of physical systems that can undergo quantum phase transitions when submitted to a magnetic field. The magnetic field induces the transition by closing energy gaps through the Zeeman effect. Examples of systems that undergo these transitions are the antiferromagnetic spin-1 chain, the antiferromagnetic spin- 1/2 ladder, the ferrimagnetic mixed spin-1 and spin- 1/2 chains and ladders. The presence of a gap in the energy spectrum with zero magnetic field leads to a magnetization plateau in the magnetization curve. We use the density matrix renormalization group to investigate the magnetization curves of the mixed spin-1 and spin- 1/2 ladder, for antiferromagnetic and ferro- magnetic couplings between the ladder legs J⊥. For J⊥ > 0, the ground-state is ferrimagnetic with the total spin equal to 1/3 of the saturation value, in accord with the Lieb-Mattis theorem. The magnetization curve presents a plateau at total magnetization 1/3 of the saturation value, the 1/3-plateau since the ground state has a gap to excitations that increase the total spin by 1 unit. Decreasing J⊥ below zero, the ground state becomes a singlet, but the 1/3-plateau survives down to a critical value J⊥ = Jc. Given that the gap closes with the magnetization fixed, it is a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition type. To determine Jc, we have made a finite-size scale analysis of the plateau width.
Hyperuniform states of matter are characterized by anomalous suppression of long-wavelength density fluctuations. While most of the interesting cases of disordered hyperuniformity are provided by complex many-body systems such as liquids or amorphous solids, classical spin chains with certain long-range interactions have been shown to demonstrate the same phenomenon. Such spin-chain systems are ideal models for exploring the effects of quantum mechanics on hyperuniformity. It is well-known that the transverse field Ising model shows a quantum phase transition (QPT) at zero temperature. Under the quantum effects of a transverse magnetic field, classical hyperuniform spin chains are expected to lose their hyperuniformity. High-precision simulations of these cases are complicated because of the presence of highly nontrivial long-range interactions. We perform an extensive analysis of these systems using density matrix renormalization group simulations to study the possibilities of phase transitions and the mechanism by which they lose hyperuniformity. Even for a spin chain of length 30, we see discontinuous changes in properties like the ``$\ensuremath{\tau}$ order metric'' of the ground state, the measure of hyperuniformity, and the second cumulant of the total magnetization along the x-direction, all suggestive of first-order QPTs. An interesting feature of the phase transitions in these disordered hyperuniform spin chains is that, depending on the parameter values, the presence of a transverse magnetic field may lead remarkably to an increase in the order of the ground state as measured by the ``$\ensuremath{\tau}$ order metric,'' even if hyperuniformity is lost. Therefore, it would be possible to design materials to target specific novel quantum behaviors in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. Our numerical investigations suggest that these spin chains can show no more than two QPTs. We further analyze the long-range interacting spin chains via the Jordan-Wigner mapping onto a system of spinless fermions, showing that under the pairwise-interaction approximation and a mean-field treatment, there can be at most two quantum phase transitions. Based on these numerical and theoretical explorations, we conjecture that for spin chains with long-range pair interactions that have convergent cosine transforms, there can be a maximum of two quantum phase transitions at zero temperature.