Feng, Shi | Search NASA

DOE OSTI2022

Detection of long-range entanglement in gapped quantum spin liquids by local measurements

Topological order, reflected in long-range patterns of entanglement, is quantified by the topological entanglement entropy γ. We show that for gapped quantum spin liquids it is possible to extract γ using two-spin local correlators. We demonstrate our method for the gapped Z 2 Kitaev spin liquid on a honeycomb lattice with anisotropic interactions. We show that the γ = ln⁡2 for Z 2 topological order can be simply extracted from local two-spin correlators across two different bonds that involve only Majorana fermions, with an accuracy comparable to or higher than the Kitaev-Preskill construction. This implies that even though the ground state can be factorized into the product of Majorana and gauge sectors, the different superselection sectors of Z 2 gauge theory determined by global Wilson loop operators can be reflected locally in the Majorana sector.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2022

Gapless to gapless phase transitions in quantum spin chains

We investigate spin chains with bilinear-biquadratic (BLBQ) spin interactions as a function of an applied magnetic field h. At the Uimin-Lai-Sutherland (ULS) critical point we find a gapless to gapless transition revealed by the dynamical structure factor S(q,ω) as a function of h. At h=0, the envelope of the lowest-energy excitations goes soft at two points, q 1 =2π/3 and q 2 =4π/3, dubbed the phase A. With increasing field, the spectral peaks at each of the gapless points bifurcate, making in total four soft modes, and combine to form a new set of excitations that soften at a single point q=π at h c1 ≈0.94. Beyond h c1 the system enters another gapless B phase until the transition at h c2 =4 to the fully polarized phase. We compare the ULS model results with those for the Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki model as a representative of the gapped Haldane phase. We explain the mechanism of the gapless to gapless transition in the ULS model using its conserved charges and a spinon band picture. We also discuss the universality of central charges of the BLBQ family of models subjected to a magnetic field.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗