We study a phase transition and critical properties of the quantum spin ladder system with a four-spin interaction. We determine a phase boundary between a rung singlet and a staggered dimer phases numerically. This phase transition is of a second order in the weak-coupling region. We confirm that this universality class is described by the
k=2 SU(2) Wess-Zumino-Witten model, analyzing the central charge and scaling dimensions. In the strong-coupling region, phase transition becomes of a first order.
We investigate the ground-state phase diagram and critical properties of the
S=1/2 two-leg Heisenberg spin ladder system with a negative four-spin interaction using a numerical exact diagonalization method. Using the perturbation theory in the strong negative rung-coupling limit, we derive an
S=1 bilinear-biquadratic chain as an effective model. We discuss the ground-state phase diagram in this limit. Next we numerically determine a phase boundary between the rung singlet phase and the columnar dimer (CD) phase by the phenomenological renormalization group method, and one between the CD phase and the Haldane phase by the twisted boundary condition method. We confirm that the phase transition between the CD phase and the Haldane phase is of second order and this universality class is described by the
k=2 SU(2) Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten nonlinear $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ model, calculating the central charge and scaling dimensions.
We study the quantum critical phase of an SU(2) symmetric spin-2 chain obtained from spin-2 bosons in a one-dimensional lattice. We obtain the scaling of the finite-size energies and entanglement entropy by exact diagonalization and density-matrix renormalization group methods. From the numerical results of the energy spectra, central charge, and scaling dimension we identify the conformal field theory describing the whole critical phase to be the SU(3)_{1} Wess-Zumino-Witten model. We find that, while the Hamiltonian is only SU(2) invariant, in this critical phase there is an emergent SU(3) symmetry in the thermodynamic limit.
We study a spin-
21 XXZ model with a four-spin interaction on a two-leg ladder. By means of effective field theory and matrix product state calculations, we obtain rich ground-state phase diagrams that consist of eight distinct gapped phases. Four of them exhibit spontaneous symmetry breaking with either a magnetic or valence-bond-solid (VBS) long-range order. The other four are featureless, i.e., the bulk ground state is unique and does not break any symmetry. The featureless phases include the rung singlet (RS) and Haldane phases as well as their variants, the RS* and Haldane* phases, in which twisted singlet pairs $(|\ensuremath{\uparrow}\ensuremath{\downarrow}\ensuremath{\rangle}+|\ensuremath{\downarrow}\ensuremath{\uparrow}\ensuremath{\rangle})/\sqrt{2}$ are formed between the two legs. We argue and demonstrate that Gaussian transitions with the central charge
c=1 occur between the featureless phases and between the ordered phases while Ising transitions with
c=1/2 occur between the featureless and ordered phases. The two types of transition lines cross at the
SU(2)-symmetric point, where the criticality is described by the
SU(2)2 Wess-Zumino-Witten theory with
c=3/2. The RS-Haldane* and RS*-Haldane transitions give examples of topological phase transitions. Interestingly, the RS* and Haldane* phases, which have highly anisotropic nature, appear even in the vicinity of the isotropic case. We demonstrate that all the four featureless phases are distinguished by topological indices in the presence of certain symmetries.
Four-spin exchange interaction has been raising intriguing questions regarding the exotic phase transitions it induces in two-dimensional quantum spin systems. In this context, we investigate the effects of a cyclic four-spin exchange in the quasi-1D limit by considering a general
N-leg spin ladder. We show by means of a low-energy approach that depending on its sign, this ring exchange interaction can engender either a staggered or a uniform dimerization from the conventional phases of spin ladders. The resulting quantum phase transition is found to be described by the SU(2)
N conformal field theory. This result, as well as the fractional value of the central charge at the transition, is further confirmed by a large-scale numerical study performed by means of exact diagonalization and density matrix renormalization group approaches for $N\ensuremath{\le}4$.
In this paper we study the ground-state properties of a ladder Hamiltonian with chiral
SU(2)-invariant spin interactions, a possible first step toward the construction of truly two-dimensional nontrivial systems with chiral properties starting from quasi-one-dimensional ones. Our analysis uses a recent implementation by us of
SU(2) symmetry in tensor network algorithms, specifically for infinite density matrix renormalization group. After a preliminary analysis with Kadanoff coarse graining and exact diagonalization for a small-size system, we discuss its bosonization and recap the continuum limit of the model to show that it corresponds to a conformal field theory, in agreement with our numerical findings. In particular, the scaling of the entanglement entropy as well as finite-entanglement scaling data show that the ground-state properties match those of the universality class of a
c=1 conformal field theory (CFT) in
(1+1) dimensions. We also study the algebraic decay of spin-spin and dimer-dimer correlation functions, as well as the algebraic convergence of the ground-state energy with the bond dimension, and the entanglement spectrum of half an infinite chain. Our results for the entanglement spectrum are remarkably similar to those of the spin-
21 Heisenberg chain, which we take as a strong indication that both systems are described by the same CFT at low energies, i.e., an
SU(2)1 Wess-Zumino-Witten theory. Moreover, we explain in detail how to construct matrix product operators for
SU(2)-invariant three-spin interactions, something that had not been addressed with sufficient depth in the literature.