We investigate quantum phase transitions (QPTs) in spin chain systems characterized by local Hamiltonians with matrix product ground states. We show how to theoretically engineer such QPT points between states with predetermined properties. While some of the characteristics of these transitions are familiar, like the appearance of singularities in the thermodynamic limit, diverging correlation length, and vanishing energy gap, others differ from the standard paradigm: In particular, the ground state energy remains analytic, and the entanglement entropy of a half-chain stays finite. Examples demonstrate that these kinds of transitions can occur at the triple point of "conventional" QPTs.
We investigate quantum phase transitions (QPTs) in spin chain systems characterized by local Hamiltonians with matrix product ground states. We show how to theoretically engineer such QPT points between states with predetermined properties. While some of the characteristics of these transitions are familiar, like the appearance of singularities in the thermodynamic limit, diverging correlation length, and vanishing energy gap, others differ from the standard paradigm: In particular, the ground state energy remains analytic, and the entanglement entropy of a half-chain stays finite. Examples demonstrate that these kinds of transitions can occur at the triple point of "conventional" QPTs.
We present a new general and much simpler scheme to construct various quantum phase transitions (QPTs) in spin chain systems with matrix product ground states. By use of the scheme we take into account one kind of matrix product state (MPS) QPT and provide a concrete model. We also study the properties of the concrete example and show that a kind of QPT appears, accompanied by the appearance of the discontinuity of the parity absent block physical observable, diverging correlation length only for the parity absent block operator, and other properties which are that the fixed point of the transition point is an isolated intermediate-coupling fixed point of renormalization flow and the entanglement entropy of a half-infinite chain is discontinuous.
According to our scheme to construct quantum phase transitions (QPTs) in spin chain systems with matrix product ground states, we first successfully combine matrix product state (MPS) QPTs with spontaneous symmetry breaking. For a concrete model, we take into account a kind of MPS QPTs accompanied by spontaneous parity breaking, though for either side of the critical point the GS is typically unique, and show that the kind of MPS QPTs occur only in the thermodynamic limit and are accompanied by the appearance of singularities, diverging correlation length, vanishing energy gap and the entanglement entropy of a half-infinite chain not only staying finite but also whose first derivative discontinuous.
Matrix product states, a key ingredient of numerical algorithms widely employed in the simulation of quantum spin chains, provide an intriguing tool for quantum phase transition engineering. At critical values of the control parameters on which their constituent matrices depend, singularities in the expectation values of certain observables can appear, in spite of the analyticity of the ground state energy. For this class of generalized quantum phase transitions, we test the validity of the recently introduced fidelity approach, where the overlap modulus of ground states corresponding to slightly different parameters is considered. We discuss several examples, successfully identifying all the present transitions. We also study the finite size scaling of fidelity derivatives, pointing out its relevance in extracting critical exponents.
We consider a spin ladder model which is known to have matrix product states as exact ground states with spin liquid characteristics. The model has two critical-point transitions at the parameter values u=0 and $\ensuremath{\infty}$. We study the variation of entanglement and fidelity measures in the ground states as a function of u and specially look for signatures of quantum phase transitions at u=0 and $\ensuremath{\infty}$. The two different entanglement measures used are S(i) (the single-site von Neumann entropy) and S(i,j) (the two-body entanglement). At the quantum critical point (QCP) $u=\ensuremath{\infty}$, the entanglement measure E[=S(i),S(i,j)] vanishes but remains nonzero at the other QCP u=0. The first and second derivatives of E with respect to the parameter u and the entanglement length associated with S(i,j) are further calculated to identify special features, if any, near the QCPs. We further determine the GS fidelity F and a quantity ln∣D∣ related to the second derivative of F and show that these quantities calculated for finite-sized systems are good indicators of QPTs occurring in the infinite system.
We consider a one-parameter family of matrix-product states of spin-1 particles on a periodic chain and study in detail the entanglement properties of such a state. In particular, we calculate exactly the entanglement of one site with the rest of the chain, and the entanglement of two distant sites with each other, and show that the derivative of both these properties diverge when the parameter g of the states passes through a critical point. Such a point can be called a point of quantum phase transition, since at this point the character of the matrix-product state, which is the ground state of a Hamiltonian, changes discontinuously. We also study the finite size effects and show how the entanglement depends on the size of the chain. This later part is relevant to the field of quantum computation where the problem of initial state preparation in finite arrays of qubits or qutrits is important. It is also shown that the entanglement of two sites have scaling behavior near the critical point.
Aim and Scope of this Book A plethora of systems exhibit phase transitions as the temperature or some other parameter is changed. Examples range from the ice-water phase transition observed in our daily life to the loss of ferromagnetism in iron or to the more sophisticated Mott insulator-superfluid phase transition observed in optical lattices [343]. The last five decades have witnessed a tremendous upsurge in the studies of phase transitions at finite temperature [727, 149, 333, 136, 494, 541, 556]. The success of Landau-Ginzburg theories and the concepts of spontaneous symmetry breaking and the renormalization group [27, 410, 821, 578] in explaining many of the finite temperature phase transitions occurring in nature has been spectacular. In this book, we will consider only a subclass of phase transitions called quantum phase transitions (QPTs) [154, 658, 725, 799, 185, 63, 62, 66, 141, 744] and we will discuss these mainly from the view point of recent studies of information and dynamics. QPTs are zero temperature phase transitions which are driven by quantum fluctuations and are usually associated with a non-analyticity in the ground state energy density of a quantum many-body Hamiltonian. We will focus on continuous QPTs where the order parameter vanishes continuously at the quantum critical point (QCP) at some value of the parameters which characterize the Hamiltonian. We will not discuss first order quantum phase transitions associated with an abrupt change in the order parameter. Usually, a first order phase transition is characterized by a finite discontinuity in the first derivative of the ground state energy density. A continuous QPT is similarly characterized by a finite discontinuity, or divergence, in the second derivative of the ground state energy density, assuming that the first derivative is continuous. This is of course the classical definition; we will later mention some QPTs where the ground state energy density is not necessarily singular.