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The chiral Potts models revisited

Helen Au-Yang, Jacques H. H. Perk

Published Jan 1, 1995• 13 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

In honor of Onsager’s ninetieth birthday, we like to review some exact results obtained so far in the chiral Potts models and to translate these results into language more transparent to physicists, so that experts in Monte Carlo calculations, high and low temperature expansions, and various other methods, can use them. We shall pay special attention to the interfacial tension ǫr between the k state and the k −r state. By examining the ground states, it is seen that the integrable line ends at a superwetting point, on which the relation ǫr = r ǫ1 is satisfied, so that it is energetically neutral to have one interface or more. We present also some partial results on the meaning of the integrable line for low temperatures where it lives in the non-wet regime. We make Baxter’s exact results more explicit for the symmetric case. By performing a Bethe Ansatz calculation with open boundary conditions we confirm a dilogarithm identity for the low-temperature expansion which may be new. We propose a new model for numerical studies. This model has only two variables and exhibits commensurate and incommensurate phase transitions and wetting transitions near zero temperature. It appears to be not integrable, except at one point, and at each temperature there is a point, where it is almost identical with the integrable chiral Potts model. KEY WORDS: Chiral Potts model; chiral clock model; star-triangle equations; Yang-Baxter equations; interfacial tension; wetting; superwetting;

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ZERO-TEMPERATURE SKEWED CHIRAL POTTS MODEL

R. J. Baxter

Functional relations have previously been obtained for the eigenvalues of the transfer matrices of the chiral Potts model. Introducing skewed boundary conditions is equivalent to merely modifying the quantum number of the spin shift operator in the relations (which accounts for at least some of the previously noted "spurious solutions"). As a first step towards calculating the general interfacial tension, we consider the model in a zero-temperature limit. It is still non-trivial, there being near-vertical free interfaces separating domains of different spin value. These interfaces behave like the "lines of down arrows" in the ice model, so one may hope to follow Lieb and use the Bethe ansatz to evaluate the partition function. It turns out that this can indeed be done. There is no wetting of an interface by intermediate phases.

Reviews in Mathematical Physics•Jan 1, 1994•1 citation

Sorting Out the Potts Models

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It was a great pleasure to hear that the American Physical Society had awarded me the 2006 Lars Onsager Prize and to read the informative news story “Order Parameter of the Chiral Potts Model Succumbs at Last to Exact Solution” that appeared on page 19 of the November edition of Physics Today. I have a few comments.There are various models named after Ren Potts, who died in Adelaide, Australia, on 9 August 2005. He was a student of Cyril Domb at Oxford University in 1952, and worked on the vector and scalar extensions of the Ising model. 1 1. R. Potts, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 48, 106 (1952) https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305004100027419. The two are often confused. The vector model is described in the Physics Today story, whereas it is the scalar model that has been solved at criticality. The N-state chiral Potts model is a different model again. Its transfer matrices commute, which makes it “solvable” in the sense that one can calculate the free energy. For N = 2 it reduces to the Ising model. It is true that C. N. Yang took six months to calculate the spontaneous magnetization (order parameter) of the Ising model, 2 2. C. N. Yang, Collected Papers, Freeman and Co, San Francisco (1983), p. 12. whereas I have been puzzling over the extension of that problem to the chiral Potts model for 15 years!For both models the results were previously known: Onsager had announced his result for the Ising model at a conference in 1949, 3 3. L. Onsager, Nuovo Cimento 6(suppl.), 261 (1949). and Giuseppe Albertini, Barry McCoy, Jacques Perk, and Shuang Tang gave the formula for chiral Potts in 1989. However, there are some differences.The story refers to both these announcements as conjectures, but it is clear from a later paper by Onsager 4 4. L. Onsager, in Critical Phenomena in Alloys, Magnets and Superconductors, R. E. Mills, E. Ascher, R. I. Jaffee, eds., McGraw-Hill, New York (1971), p. 3. that he had already derived his answer when he announced it. Being Onsager, he did not rush into print, but worked at refining and polishing his derivation for three years, which gave Yang the opportunity to publish his solution in 1952.By contrast, the chiral Potts result given by Giuseppe Albertini and colleagues really was a conjecture—an elegant formula, inspired by the Ising result, that fitted all known series expansions. It is this conjecture that I have now verified, subject to analyticity assumptions no more drastic than those used for the order parameters of other post-Ising models. From 1998 until recently, I was looking at the Jimbo-Miwa-Nakayashiki method. It depends on solving for a function of two arguments, and I was having trouble. The idea that came to me over two days in December 2004 was to relate those arguments so that there was just one independent variable, in much the same way as in the free energy calculation one starts by looking at the simpler “superintegrable” case. The switch to one variable made the needed analyticity properties fairly obvious, and was sufficient to obtain the order parameters. 5 5. R. J. Baxter, J. Stat. Phys. 120, 1 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-005-5534-3. It was a good illustration of the approach used in these solvable models—one needs to generalize sufficiently to see properties like commuting transfer matrices, but one should beware of generalizing unnecessarily.REFERENCESSection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCES <<CITING ARTICLES1. R. Potts, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 48, 106 (1952) https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305004100027419. Google ScholarCrossref, ISI2. C. N. Yang, Collected Papers, Freeman and Co, San Francisco (1983), p. 12. Google Scholar3. L. Onsager, Nuovo Cimento 6(suppl.), 261 (1949). Google ScholarCrossref4. L. Onsager, in Critical Phenomena in Alloys, Magnets and Superconductors, R. E. Mills, E. Ascher, R. I. Jaffee, eds., McGraw-Hill, New York (1971), p. 3. Google Scholar5. R. J. Baxter, J. Stat. Phys. 120, 1 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-005-5534-3. Google ScholarCrossref, ISI© 2005 American Institute of Physics.

Physics Today•Dec 1, 2005•4 citations

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Proceedings of the conference on exactly soluble models in statistical mechanics : historical perspectives and current status, Northeastern University, Boston 30-31 March 1996

C. Judson King, Fa Yueh Wu

Some of the early history of exactly soluble models, E.H. Lieb the many faces of the chiral Potts model, H. Au-Yang and J.H.H. Perk star-triangle and star-star relations in statistical mechanics, R.J. Baxter knot theory and statistical mechanics, L.H. Kauffman star-star relation for the Potts model, C. King and F.Y. Wu finite temperature correlations of the Ising chain in a transverse field, S. Sachdev exact solutions of low-dimensional reaction-diffusion systems, A.M.R. Cadilhe et al the infinite-state Potts model and solid partitions of an integer, H.Y. Huang and F.Y. Wu exact evaluation of thermodynamic quantities for the integrable T-J chain, A. Klumper multilayer extension of two-dimensional solvable statistical models to three dimensions, V. Popkov a higher-level Bailey lemma, A. Schilling and S.O. Warnaar the Heisenberg chain as a dynamical model for protein synthesis - some theoretical and experimental results, G.M. Schutz free fermion conditions and the symmetries of integrability, C.-M. Viallet. (Part contents).

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Phase diagram of a six-state chiral Potts model

H. Meyer, J C Anglès d'Auriac

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Using the corner-transfer matrix renormalization group approach, we revisit the three-state chiral Potts model on the square lattice, a model proposed in the eighties to describe commensurate-incommensurate transitions at surfaces, and with direct relevance to recent experiments on chains of Rydberg atoms. This model was suggested by Huse and Fisher to have a chiral transition in the vicinity of the Potts point, a possibility that turned out to be very difficult to definitely establish or refute numerically. Our results confirm that the transition changes character at a Lifshitz point that separates a line of Pokrosky-Talapov transitions far enough from the Potts point from a line of direct continuous order-disorder transition close to it. Thanks to the accuracy of the numerical results, we have been able to base the analysis entirely on effective exponents to deal with the crossovers that have hampered previous numerical investigations. The emerging picture is that of a new universality class with exponents that do not change between the Potts point and the Lifshitz point, and that appear to be consistent with those of a self-dual version of the model, namely correlation lengths exponents νx=2/3 in the direction of the asymmetry and νy=1 perpendicular to it, an incommensurability exponent β¯=2/3, a specific heat exponent that keeps the value α=1/3 of the three-state Potts model, and a dynamical exponent z=3/2. These results are in excellent agreement with experimental results obtained on reconstructed surfaces in the nineties, and shed light on recent Kibble-Zurek experiments on the period-3 phase of chains of Rydberg atoms.

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In honor of Onsager’s ninetieth birthday, we like to review some exact results obtained so far in the chiral Potts models and to translate these results into language more transparent to physicists, so that experts in Monte Carlo calculations, high and low temperature expansions, and various other methods, can use them. We shall pay special attention to the interfacial tension ǫr between the k state and the k −r state. By examining the ground states, it is seen that the integrable line ends at a superwetting point, on which the relation ǫr = r ǫ1 is satisfied, so that it is energetically neutral to have one interface or more. We present also some partial results on the meaning of the integrable line for low temperatures where it lives in the non-wet regime. We make Baxter’s exact results more explicit for the symmetric case. By performing a Bethe Ansatz calculation with open boundary conditions we confirm a dilogarithm identity for the low-temperature expansion which may be new. We propose a new model for numerical studies. This model has only two variables and exhibits commensurate and incommensurate phase transitions and wetting transitions near zero temperature. It appears to be not integrable, except at one point, and at each temperature there is a point, where it is almost identical with the integrable chiral Potts model. KEY WORDS: Chiral Potts model; chiral clock model; star-triangle equations; Yang-Baxter equations; interfacial tension; wetting; superwetting;
Functional relations have previously been obtained for the eigenvalues of the transfer matrices of the chiral Potts model. Introducing skewed boundary conditions is equivalent to merely modifying the quantum number of the spin shift operator in the relations (which accounts for at least some of the previously noted "spurious solutions"). As a first step towards calculating the general interfacial tension, we consider the model in a zero-temperature limit. It is still non-trivial, there being near-vertical free interfaces separating domains of different spin value. These interfaces behave like the "lines of down arrows" in the ice model, so one may hope to follow Lieb and use the Bethe ansatz to evaluate the partition function. It turns out that this can indeed be done. There is no wetting of an interface by intermediate phases.
It was a great pleasure to hear that the American Physical Society had awarded me the 2006 Lars Onsager Prize and to read the informative news story “Order Parameter of the Chiral Potts Model Succumbs at Last to Exact Solution” that appeared on page 19 of the November edition of Physics Today. I have a few comments.There are various models named after Ren Potts, who died in Adelaide, Australia, on 9 August 2005. He was a student of Cyril Domb at Oxford University in 1952, and worked on the vector and scalar extensions of the Ising model. 1 1. R. Potts, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 48, 106 (1952) https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305004100027419. The two are often confused. The vector model is described in the Physics Today story, whereas it is the scalar model that has been solved at criticality. The N-state chiral Potts model is a different model again. Its transfer matrices commute, which makes it “solvable” in the sense that one can calculate the free energy. For N = 2 it reduces to the Ising model. It is true that C. N. Yang took six months to calculate the spontaneous magnetization (order parameter) of the Ising model, 2 2. C. N. Yang, Collected Papers, Freeman and Co, San Francisco (1983), p. 12. whereas I have been puzzling over the extension of that problem to the chiral Potts model for 15 years!For both models the results were previously known: Onsager had announced his result for the Ising model at a conference in 1949, 3 3. L. Onsager, Nuovo Cimento 6(suppl.), 261 (1949). and Giuseppe Albertini, Barry McCoy, Jacques Perk, and Shuang Tang gave the formula for chiral Potts in 1989. However, there are some differences.The story refers to both these announcements as conjectures, but it is clear from a later paper by Onsager 4 4. L. Onsager, in Critical Phenomena in Alloys, Magnets and Superconductors, R. E. Mills, E. Ascher, R. I. Jaffee, eds., McGraw-Hill, New York (1971), p. 3. that he had already derived his answer when he announced it. Being Onsager, he did not rush into print, but worked at refining and polishing his derivation for three years, which gave Yang the opportunity to publish his solution in 1952.By contrast, the chiral Potts result given by Giuseppe Albertini and colleagues really was a conjecture—an elegant formula, inspired by the Ising result, that fitted all known series expansions. It is this conjecture that I have now verified, subject to analyticity assumptions no more drastic than those used for the order parameters of other post-Ising models. From 1998 until recently, I was looking at the Jimbo-Miwa-Nakayashiki method. It depends on solving for a function of two arguments, and I was having trouble. The idea that came to me over two days in December 2004 was to relate those arguments so that there was just one independent variable, in much the same way as in the free energy calculation one starts by looking at the simpler “superintegrable” case. The switch to one variable made the needed analyticity properties fairly obvious, and was sufficient to obtain the order parameters. 5 5. R. J. Baxter, J. Stat. Phys. 120, 1 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-005-5534-3. It was a good illustration of the approach used in these solvable models—one needs to generalize sufficiently to see properties like commuting transfer matrices, but one should beware of generalizing unnecessarily.REFERENCESSection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCES <<CITING ARTICLES1. R. Potts, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 48, 106 (1952) https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305004100027419. Google ScholarCrossref, ISI2. C. N. Yang, Collected Papers, Freeman and Co, San Francisco (1983), p. 12. Google Scholar3. L. Onsager, Nuovo Cimento 6(suppl.), 261 (1949). Google ScholarCrossref4. L. Onsager, in Critical Phenomena in Alloys, Magnets and Superconductors, R. E. Mills, E. Ascher, R. I. Jaffee, eds., McGraw-Hill, New York (1971), p. 3. Google Scholar5. R. J. Baxter, J. Stat. Phys. 120, 1 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-005-5534-3. Google ScholarCrossref, ISI© 2005 American Institute of Physics.
A new type of Yang-Baxter equation (YBE) for RRR-operators depending on three spectral parameters is constructed from the star-triangle relation for the chiral Potts model. As the ZNZ_NZN​ symmetric generalization to the Ising model, its Boltzmann weights are known to depend on two variables describing a curve with genus larger than one for N>2N>2N>2, except for the self-dual point corresponding to the Fateev-Zamolodchikov chain. Combined with the fact that quantum Hamiltonians of edge-type models such as the Ising model contain both nearest-neighbor interaction and onsite potential terms, this leads naturally to an additional spectral parameter in the associated RRR-operator. The construction extends the edge-vertex correspondence of solvable lattice models, and provides a bridge between the Bazhanov-Stroganov four-parameter RRR-matrix---realized as an intertwiner of cyclic representations of Uq(sl2)U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_2)Uq​(sl2​) at a root of unity---and Shastry's two-parameter RRR-operator obtained from the decorated YBE.
Some of the early history of exactly soluble models, E.H. Lieb the many faces of the chiral Potts model, H. Au-Yang and J.H.H. Perk star-triangle and star-star relations in statistical mechanics, R.J. Baxter knot theory and statistical mechanics, L.H. Kauffman star-star relation for the Potts model, C. King and F.Y. Wu finite temperature correlations of the Ising chain in a transverse field, S. Sachdev exact solutions of low-dimensional reaction-diffusion systems, A.M.R. Cadilhe et al the infinite-state Potts model and solid partitions of an integer, H.Y. Huang and F.Y. Wu exact evaluation of thermodynamic quantities for the integrable T-J chain, A. Klumper multilayer extension of two-dimensional solvable statistical models to three dimensions, V. Popkov a higher-level Bailey lemma, A. Schilling and S.O. Warnaar the Heisenberg chain as a dynamical model for protein synthesis - some theoretical and experimental results, G.M. Schutz free fermion conditions and the symmetries of integrability, C.-M. Viallet. (Part contents).
We present the two-dimensional phase diagram of an isotropic six-state chiral Potts model with a noncyclic Boltzmann weight matrix. This model has been introduced as being preintegrable in the sense that a very constraining functional relation for the partition function is known. The phase diagram shows itself to be very rich. In one region the model almost decouples, like a (qs{\mathit{q}}_{\mathit{s}}qs​,qt{\mathit{q}}_{\mathit{t}}qt​) model, in a product of two simpler models; while in another region a mean-field calculation gives good results compared to our Monte Carlo simulations. All the transition lines, as well as their order, are numerically determined. Besides, using the above-mentioned functional relation, an exact form for one of these transition lines is proposed. The low-energy states are also analyzed showing a variety of zero-temperature behavior in the different regions of the phase diagram.
Using the corner-transfer matrix renormalization group approach, we revisit the three-state chiral Potts model on the square lattice, a model proposed in the eighties to describe commensurate-incommensurate transitions at surfaces, and with direct relevance to recent experiments on chains of Rydberg atoms. This model was suggested by Huse and Fisher to have a chiral transition in the vicinity of the Potts point, a possibility that turned out to be very difficult to definitely establish or refute numerically. Our results confirm that the transition changes character at a Lifshitz point that separates a line of Pokrosky-Talapov transitions far enough from the Potts point from a line of direct continuous order-disorder transition close to it. Thanks to the accuracy of the numerical results, we have been able to base the analysis entirely on effective exponents to deal with the crossovers that have hampered previous numerical investigations. The emerging picture is that of a new universality class with exponents that do not change between the Potts point and the Lifshitz point, and that appear to be consistent with those of a self-dual version of the model, namely correlation lengths exponents νx=2/3 in the direction of the asymmetry and νy=1 perpendicular to it, an incommensurability exponent β¯=2/3, a specific heat exponent that keeps the value α=1/3 of the three-state Potts model, and a dynamical exponent z=3/2. These results are in excellent agreement with experimental results obtained on reconstructed surfaces in the nineties, and shed light on recent Kibble-Zurek experiments on the period-3 phase of chains of Rydberg atoms.