Translation-Invariant Hamiltonians

Nick G. Jones, Noah Linden

We construct new families of spin chain Hamiltonians that are local, integrable, and translationally invariant. To do so, we make use of the Clifford group that arises in quantum information theory. We consider translation invariant Clifford group transformations that can be described by matrix product operators (MPOs). We classify translation invariant Clifford group transformations that consist of a shift operator and an MPO of bond dimension two—this includes transformations that preserve locality of all Hamiltonians and those that lead to non-local images of particular operators but, nevertheless, preserve locality of certain Hamiltonians. We characterize translation invariant Clifford group transformations that take single-site Pauli operators to local operators on at most five sites—examples of Quantum Cellular Automata—leading to a discrete family of Hamiltonians that are equivalent to the canonical XXZ model under such transformations. For spin chains solvable by the algebraic Bethe ansatz, we explain how conjugating by an MPO affects the underlying integrable structure. This allows us to relate our results to the usual classifications of integrable Hamiltonians. We also treat the case of spin chains solvable by free fermions.

Anilesh Mohari

Though our primary motivation is to study properties of the ground states of a Hamiltonian for quantum spin chain, in this exposition we propose a general methodology valid for a translation invariant state. To that end we study the associated Popescu systems [Po,BJKW] representing the translation invariant state and find an useful criteria for the state to be pure. As a simple consequence of this criteria we prove a surprising result which says that there exists no translation invariant lattice symmetric and SU(2)-gauge invariant pure state for half-odd integer spin chain. As a consequence of this result we prove that ground state for half-odd integer spin chain is not unique for any SU(2)-gauge invariant translation and lattice symmetric Hamiltonian. In other words this exhibits that there is a phase transition in the ground state for anti-ferromagnetic isotropic Heisenberg half-odd integer spin chain. 2 It has been known in physics literature that the spin 1

A. Horzela

Stefan K. Kehrein

Ruizhi Liu, Jinmin Yi

We construct translation-invariant pure quasifree fermionic states on the one-dimensional lattice whose half-chain von Neumann algebras are hyperfinite factors of type $\mathrm{II}_\infty$ or $\mathrm{III}_λ$ for any $0<λ\leq 1$. Via the Jordan-Wigner-Araki transformation, these yield translation-invariant pure spin-chain states with the same half-chain factors, demonstrating that such factors need not be of type I or III. Each state is the unique ground state of a gapless, translation-invariant parent Hamiltonian with superpolynomially decaying interactions. For any fixed factor type, the interval entanglement entropy can exhibit widely varying growth rates, from arbitrarily slow divergence to nearly power-law growth, showing that entropy scaling does not determine the factor type. In contrast, we prove that gauge-invariant quadratic Hamiltonians with finitely many flavours and exponentially decaying hopping exhibit a dichotomy: their ground states either satisfy an area law with a type I half-chain factor, or have logarithmic entropy growth with a type $\mathrm{III}_1$ factor. The counterexample was discovered with AI assistance.