This thesis studies a selection of time-independent phase transitions in lattice spin models and of dynamical phase transitions in stochastic dynamics. First, we explore the quantum phase transitions of some old and some newly introduced plaquette spin models. The classical zero-temperature ground states of these plaquette spin models can be equally constructed through a mapping to the dynamical evolution of the respective cellular automata, thus manifesting a relation between dynamical and static processes. We describe in detail the quantum phase transitions of those plaquette models whose cellular automaton constraint is linear when in the presence of quantum fluctuation fields. We also introduce and study paradigmatic models from the nonlinear cellular automaton class. We study frustration effects and effective lattice gauge theories for extensions of the models with linear constraints, thus relating disparate areas of classical and quantum many-body theory with gauge theories, classical satisfiability problems, and glasses. At the same time, we study kinetically constrained spin models whose constraints are implemented dynamically. Specifically, we focus on relating concepts of quantum dualities with classical biased stochastic models and present whole classes with multicritical points and non-invertible symmetries.
This thesis studies a selection of time-independent phase transitions in lattice spin models and of dynamical phase transitions in stochastic dynamics. First, we explore the quantum phase transitions of some old and some newly introduced plaquette spin models. The classical zero-temperature ground states of these plaquette spin models can be equally constructed through a mapping to the dynamical evolution of the respective cellular automata, thus manifesting a relation between dynamical and static processes. We describe in detail the quantum phase transitions of those plaquette models whose cellular automaton constraint is linear when in the presence of quantum fluctuation fields. We also introduce and study paradigmatic models from the nonlinear cellular automaton class. We study frustration effects and effective lattice gauge theories for extensions of the models with linear constraints, thus relating disparate areas of classical and quantum many-body theory with gauge theories, classical satisfiability problems, and glasses. At the same time, we study kinetically constrained spin models whose constraints are implemented dynamically. Specifically, we focus on relating concepts of quantum dualities with classical biased stochastic models and present whole classes with multicritical points and non-invertible symmetries.
The work presented in this thesis is divided into two main parts: strong zero modes in quantum spin chains with open boundaries and large deviations in classical spin systems. The results concerning the strong zero modes are presented in chapters 2 and 3, while chapter 4 contains the results about large deviations in systems of many, but independent, classical degrees of freedom. These two distinct classes of problems in spin chains are both about aspects of slow relaxation to equilibrium in many-body systems. Nowadays slow dynamics and non-ergodicity in many-body quantum systems are receiving much attention due to their notable technological potential for storing and processing, for very long times, the quantum information encoded in boundary degrees of freedom. In the first part of the work presented in this thesis we mainly focus on quantum spin chains with open boundaries, which can display coherence times for edge spins, that diverge with the system size, as a consequence of the emergence, in the thermodynamic limit, of conserved local quantities, called strong zero modes. First, we discuss the fate of these coherence times when dynamics becomes dissipative. Understanding the behavior of these long correlation times in open quantum systems, undergoing Markovian (memoryless) dynamics, would allow for the possibility of exploiting the protected information encoded in the boundary spins for applications in quantum devices in realistic non-equilibrium settings. Second, we study one possible simple generalization of the transverse field Ising model to a class of ladder spin systems with plaquette interactions in the presence of a transverse field. Also for these systems one can explicitly construct the strong zero mode operators and understand the behavior of the consequential long coherence times for the edge degrees of freedom under isolated (unitary) dynamics. This is possible because the models we consider, while appearing complex superficially, can be brought to simple forms by exploiting an extensive number of conserved quantities they possess. The results presented in chapters 2 and 3 are closely related, even if they focus on different models and investigate different aspects of their dynamics. Nevertheless, the underlying concept they are based on is the same one, that is, an eigenstate phase transition for the strong zero modes that has interesting consequences for the full energy spectrum. In the second part of the thesis we focus on a different type of phase transitions. Here we address the issue of dynamical large deviation phase transitions from a disordered phase to an ordered one, in classical systems which consist in a collection of independent Ising spins evolving stochastically. Surprisingly, by reweighing trajectories accordingly to a certain type of time-integrated observable, even a system of independently evolving spins can display some critical behavior, at the fluctuation level, in trajectory space in the large size and long time limit. By making use of the tilted generator techniques we study the statistics of two particular time-integrated observables. Their associated tilted generators have an exact Kramers-Wannier duality and they look like, up to a sign and an additive constant, some specific well known quantum Hamiltonians. In this sense, the dynamical large deviation phase transitions we observe in these classical stochastic systems translate in ground state quantum phase transitions taking place at the self dual point of the tilted generators we study.
Classical and quantum spin systems are widely used models in both experimental and theoretical condensed matter physics. In many materials, the electronic interactions can be difficult to model exactly. However, in some insulators (Mott insulators), the magnetic (spin) interactions can be captured well with spin-only models. Several models are studied in this thesis. First, I report the solution of a long-standing issue in a classical frustrated spin model (i.e., where the quantum effects are neglected and the complexity is due to competing interactions): the nature of the thermal phase transition to a stripe state in the two dimensional (2D) J1-J2 model. Here J1 and J2 are nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor couplings. Monte Carlo simulations with single-spin updates are used for the calculations, and an extended-ensemble method, a generalization of the Wang-Landau algorithm, is also developed and tested. I focus on the study of "weak universality" behavior (continuously varying critical exponents, with one of the exponents staying fixed), for which I show a correspondence with a known class of conformal field theories with charge c = 1. Next, moving to quantum spins, to shed light on magnetic systems studied experimentally and to investigate new types of quantum states of interest in developing theories of quantum magnetism, I study the S = 1/2 Heisenberg model on the 2D square lattice with added six-spin interactions (the so-called J-Q3 model) as well as a set of 3D quantum antiferromagnets on dimerized lattices. Here I use the stochastic series expansion quantum Monte Carlo method. In the study of the J-Q3 model, I report on a similar weak-universality behavior as in the classical J1-J2 model, but with a mapping to a different known class of c = 1 conformal field theories. The critical behavior of the system again shows continuously changing exponents, in a way which corresponds to a gradual weakening of Z4 symmetry-breaking to an emergent U(1) symmetry. In the study of dimerized antiferromagnets, I report on a universal behavior of the Néel temperature TN, which can be related to ground state parameters independently of the microscopic interaction details in several different models.
This thesis focuses on identifying different types of critical phenomena within one-dimensional quantum lattice spin systems. People are exposed to classical critical phenomena everyday in the form of phase transitions, such as from water to ice. Surrounding quantum phase transitions, there is a number of exciting phenomena still to be explored, enhancing our knowledge of the quantum effects. We will examine the features of quantum phase transitions within spin chains, where our focus will be on the use of entanglement measures, and we will explore an extension of the standard Bose-Hubbard model on a one-dimensional lattice with a non-trivial elementary cell. Our first main focus will be on the use of entanglement scaling as an indicator of when a phase transition has occurred, more specifically for first-order quantum phase transitions in the vicinity of second-order quantum phase transitions. In this context, we show the dramatic importance of finite-size effects when a first-order quantum phase transition occurs in the nearby region of multi-critical point containing also a second-order quantum phase transition. Through the use of finite-size scaling we highlight that a bipartite measure of entanglement can correctly identify a given first-order quantum phase transition. Motivated by the plethora of diverse features that geometric frustration may lead to, we will also examine the Bose-Hubbard model on a geometrically frustrated lattice. The lattice we will examine is a one-dimensional chain of rhombi and causes the particles to form pairs in the presence of repulsive interactions. We perform a detailed numerical analysis of the different phases emerging from the model, including the block entropy and entanglement spectrum. Additionally, we perform an analysis of the model under dynamics with a single, a pair of particles and for unit filling.
This thesis presents computational studies of three different models of many-body physics with direct or indirect constraints. The presence of constraints in complex many-body systems calls for non-trivial numerical algorithms to study them. The first two models which have a direct form of local constraint are the Rokhsar-Kivelson Quantum Dimer model (QDM) and a classical statistical mechanics model of non-intersecting loops with attractive interactions, both on the square lattice. The investigations of such constrained models have found a recent resurgence with their direct realizations on Rydberg atom arrays quantum simulators. The study of the classical model uses a Monte Carlo directed loop algorithm while the QDM calls for a novel Quantum Monte Carlo scheme based on the framework of Stochastic Series Expansions called the Sweeping Cluster Algorithm (SCA). We present a modification of the SCA in order to render simulations fully ergodic at finite temperature. For both models, our numerical studies show the existence of a critical phase separated by a phase transition at finite temperature to an ordered phase of dimers or loops which spontaneously breaks certain lattice symmetries. We show that for the case where the interaction is attractive this phase transition is of Kosterlitz-Thouless type and can be understood by constructing a coarse-grained field theory through a height mapping. The finite temperature phase diagram of the QDM presents an unusual re-entrance behavior in the critical phase. The final part of this thesis deals with the role of non-abelian symmetries in the thermalization process of quantum many-body systems. We study the high-energy eigenstates of a SU(3) symmetric spin chain in presence of disorder. While the model does not directly have constraints, we perform exact diagonalization in a constrained basis of Young tableau making use of the full SU(3) symmetry of the model. By looking at the commonly used probes for thermalization (spectral statistics, distribution of local observables and scaling of entanglement entropy), we show that the model exhibits a non-ergodic regime over a broad range of system sizes for strong enough disorder, contrasting with the rapid thermalization observed at weak disorder.
Abstract We present a class of two-dimensional randomized plaquette models, where the multi-spin interaction term, referred to as the plaquette term, is replaced by a single-site spin term with a probability of 1 − p . By varying p, we observe a ground state phase transition, or equivalently, a phase transition of the symmetry operator. We find that as we vary p, the symmetry operator changes from being extensive to being localized in space. These models can be equivalently understood as 1+1D randomized cellular automaton dynamics, allowing the 2D transition to be interpreted as a 1+1D dynamical absorbing phase transition. In this paper, our primary focus is on the plaquette term with three or five-body interactions, where we explore the universality classes of the transitions. Specifically, for the model with five-body interaction, we demonstrate that it belongs to the same universality class as the measurement-induced entanglement phase transition observed in 1+1D Clifford dynamics, as well as the boundary entanglement transition of the 2D cluster state induced by random bulk Pauli measurements. This work establishes a connection between transitions in classical spin models, cellular automata, and hybrid random circuits.
Recent work has constructed higher-dimensional analogs of non-invertible symmetries similar to 1+1d Kramers-Wannier duality. Although their continuum descriptions often treat purely gravitational topological terms as inessential counterterms, these terms can have an essential lattice manifestation: they distinguish states prepared by finite-depth quantum circuits (FDQCs) from those entangled by nontrivial quantum cellular automata (QCAs). Motivated by this mismatch, we show that QCAs associated with gravitational topological responses arise in several related settings: (1) lattice realizations of projective SL(2,ZN) relations generated by topological operations on symmetries; (2) squares of dualities that generalize the relation between fermionization and Kramers-Wannier duality; (3) lattice implementations of QCAs through higher-form gauging; and (4) invertible phases protected by generalized time-reversal symmetries. We derive new projective SL(2,ZN) relations whose projective phases are gravitational topological responses constructed from Stiefel-Whitney classes. We furthermore give a general protocol for preparing the associated QCA-entangled states using finite-depth unitary circuits, measurements, and error correction. These results unify the study of gravitational topological responses in field theories, higher dimensional dualities, and quantum cellular automata.