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Science

Phase transitions in a programmable quantum spin glass simulator

R. Harris, Yuki Sato, A. J. Berkley, M. Reis, Fabio Altomare, M. H. S. Amin, Kelly Boothby, P. Bunyk, C. Deng, Colin Enderud, Shuiyuan Huang, Emile Hoskinson, Mark W. Johnson, E. Ladizinsky, N. Ladizinsky, Trevor M. Lanting, R. Li, T. Medina, Reza Molavi, R. Neufeld, T. Oh, I. Pavlov, I. Perminov, Gabriel Poulin-Lamarre, Chris C. Rich, Anatoly Yu. Smirnov, Loren J. Swenson, Nicholas Tsai, Mark H. Volkmann, Jed D. Whittaker, J. Yao

Published Jul 13, 2018• 259 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Understanding magnetic phases in quantum mechanical systems is one of the essential goals in condensed matter physics, and the advent of prototype quantum simulation hardware has provided new tools for experimentally probing such systems. We report on the experimental realization of a quantum simulation of interacting Ising spins on three-dimensional cubic lattices up to dimensions 8 × 8 × 8 on a D-Wave processor (D-Wave Systems, Burnaby, Canada). The ability to control and read out the state of individual spins provides direct access to several order parameters, which we used to determine the lattice's magnetic phases as well as critical disorder and one of its universal exponents. By tuning the degree of disorder and effective transverse magnetic field, we observed phase transitions between a paramagnetic, an antiferromagnetic, and a spin-glass phase.

DOI
10.1126/science.aat2025

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Europhysics Letters (EPL)•May 10, 1993•10 citations
Understanding magnetic phases in quantum mechanical systems is one of the essential goals in condensed matter physics, and the advent of prototype quantum simulation hardware has provided new tools for experimentally probing such systems. We report on the experimental realization of a quantum simulation of interacting Ising spins on three-dimensional cubic lattices up to dimensions 8 × 8 × 8 on a D-Wave processor (D-Wave Systems, Burnaby, Canada). The ability to control and read out the state of individual spins provides direct access to several order parameters, which we used to determine the lattice's magnetic phases as well as critical disorder and one of its universal exponents. By tuning the degree of disorder and effective transverse magnetic field, we observed phase transitions between a paramagnetic, an antiferromagnetic, and a spin-glass phase.
We investigate the ferromagnetic-glassy transitions that separate the low-temperature ferromagnetic and spin-glass phases in the temperature-disorder phase diagram of three-dimensional Ising spin-glass models. For this purpose, we consider the cubic-lattice $\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}J$ (Edwards-Anderson) Ising model with bond distribution $P(J)=p\ensuremath{\delta}(J\ensuremath{-}1)+(1\ensuremath{-}p)\ensuremath{\delta}(J+1)$, and present a numerical Monte Carlo study of the critical behavior along the line that marks the onset of ferromagnetism. The finite-size scaling analysis of the Monte Carlo data shows that the ferromagnetic-glassy transition line is slightly reentrant. As a consequence, for an interval of the disorder parameter ppp, around $p\ensuremath{\approx}0.77$, the system presents a low-temperature glassy phase, an intermediate ferromagnetic phase, and a high-temperature paramagnetic phase. Along the ferromagnetic-glassy transition line, magnetic correlations show a universal critical behavior with critical exponents $\ensuremath{\nu}=0.96(2)$ and $\ensuremath{\eta}=\ensuremath{-}0.39(2)$. The hyperscaling relation $\ensuremath{\beta}/\ensuremath{\nu}=(1+\ensuremath{\eta})/2$ is satisfied at the transitions, so that $\ensuremath{\beta}/\ensuremath{\nu}=0.305(10)$. This magnetic critical behavior represents a new universality class for ferromagnetic transitions in Ising-type disordered systems. Overlap correlations are apparently not critical and show a smooth behavior across the transition.
We have studied the critical properties of the three-dimensional random anisotropy Heisenberg model by means of numerical simulations using the Parallel Tempering method. We have simulated the model with two different disorder distributions, cubic and isotropic ones, with two different anisotropy strengths for each disorder class. For the case of the anisotropic disorder, we have found evidence of universality by finding critical exponents and universal dimensionless ratios independent of the strength of the disorder. In the case of isotropic disorder distribution the situation is very involved: we have found two phase transitions in the magnetization channel which are merging for larger lattices remaining a zero magnetization low-temperature phase. Studying this region using a spin-glass order parameter we have found evidence for a spin-glass phase transition. We have estimated effective critical exponents for the spin-glass phase transition for the different values of the strength of the isotropic disorder, discussing the crossover regime.
Spin-liquid and spin-glass states represent two distinct phases of disordered quantum spin systems. These states are, in principle, distinguished by quantum-entangled fluctuations and spin freezing, but identifying each state and characterizing the transition between them remains challenging. Here, we systematically explore the relationship between the spin-liquid and spin-glass states using a model with all-to-all random interactions among ppp spins, which interpolates between the Ising-like one-component, XY-like two-component, and isotropic three-component cases. By analyzing the system-size NNN dependence of the Edwards-Anderson order parameter and the density of states, we identify the transition from the spin liquid to the spin glass for various values of ppp. We show that the phase diagrams for different ppp can be unified through a scaling with N/p2N/{p}^{2}N/p2, revealing that increasing anisotropy in the interactions systematically suppresses the spin-liquid phase and extends the spin-glass regime. Furthermore, we examine the competition between multiple-spin interactions and anisotropy under an external magnetic field in the isotropic case, and find that the spin-liquid phase transitions into the spin-glass phase before entering a quantum paramagnetic phase. Our findings provide insights into quantum disordered phases and the transitions between them.
We consider quantum rotors or Ising spins in a transverse field on a d-dimensional lattice, with random, frustrating, short-range, exchange interactions. The quantum dynamics are associated with a finite moment of inertia for the rotors, and with the transverse field for the Ising spins. For a suitable distribution of exchange constants, these models display spin-glass and quantum paramagnet phases and a zero-temperature (T) quantum transition between them. An earlier exact solution for the critical properties of a model with infinite-range interactions cna be reproduced by minimization of a Landau effective-action functional for the model in finite d with short-range interactions. The functional is expressed in terms of a composite spin field which is bilocal in time. The mean-field phase diagram near the T=0 critical point is mapped out as a function of T, strength of the quantum coupling, and applied fields. The spin-glass phase has replica symmetry breaking; but, as in the classical Ising spin glass, the order parameter becomes replica symmetric as T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0. Next we examine the consequences of fluctuations about the mean field for the critical properties. Above d=8, and with certain restrictions on the values of the Landau couplings, we find that the transition is controlled by a Gaussian fixed point with mean-field critical exponents. For couplings not attracted by the Gaussian fixed point above d=8, and for all physical couplings below d=8, we find runaway renormalization-group flows to strong coupling. General scaling relations that should be valid even at the strong-coupling fixed point are proposed and compared with Monte Carlo simulations.
We report a Monte Carlo study of the effects of fluctuations in the bond distribution of Ising spin glasses in a transverse magnetic field, in the paramagnetic phase in the T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0 limit. Rare, strong fluctuations give rise to Griffiths singularities, which can dominate the zero-temperature behavior of these quantum systems, as originally demonstrated by McCoy for one-dimensional (d=1) systems. Our simulations are done on a square lattice in d=2 and a cubic lattice in d=3, for a Gaussian distribution of nearest neighbor (only) bonds. In d=2, where the linear susceptibility was found to diverge at the critical transverse field strength ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{\mathit{c}}$ for the order-disorder phase transition at T=0, the average nonlinear susceptibility ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\chi}}}_{\mathrm{nl}}$ diverges in the paramagnetic phase for \ensuremath{\Gamma} well above ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{\mathit{c}}$, as is also demonstrated in the accompanying paper by Rieger and Young. In d=3, the linear susceptibility remains finite at ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{\mathit{c}}$, and while Griffiths singularity effects are certainly observable in the paramagnetic phase, the nonlinear susceptibility appears to diverge only rather close to ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{\mathit{c}}$. These results show that Griffiths singularities remain persistent in dimensions above one (where they are known to be strong), though their magnitude decreases monotonically with increasing dimensionality (there being no Griffiths singularities in the limit of infinite dimensionality). \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
We explore the behavior of the nearest-neighbor Ising spin glass with discrete bonds (± J ) on the face-centered cubic lattice using both Monte Carlo simulations and high-temperature expansions. A phase transition to a spin glass phase is found in zero magnetic field ( H ) at a nonzero temperature ( T = T c ), with critical exponents close to that for the simple cubic lattice. In the ( H, T )-plane, the contours of constant spin glass susceptibility show an upturn towards higher H at the lowest T , consistent with the possibility of a de Almeida-Thouless line of phase transitions in a field. Further, the upturn is similar to those on the simple cubic lattice and less pronounced than on the four-dimensional hypercubic lattice, despite the higher coordination number of the f.c.c. lattice, suggesting that the upturn is a dimension-related property.