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Quantum Breakdown Condensate as a Disorder-Free Quantum Glass

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2025-12-29 v1 Quantum Gases Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We study the phase diagram of a one-dimensional spin quantum breakdown model, which has an exponential U(1)U(1) symmetry with charge unit decaying as 2j2^{-j} with site position jj. By exact diagonalization (ED), we show that the model with spin S2S\ge2 exhibits an exponential U(1)U(1) spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) phase dubbed a quantum breakdown condensate. It exhibits a bulk gap violating the Goldstone theorem, and an edge mode only on the left edge if in open boundary condition. In a length LL lattice, the condensate has O(2L)\mathcal{O}(2^L) number of SSB ground states originating from the O(2L)\mathcal{O}(2^L) number of exponential U(1)U(1) charge sectors, leading to a finite entropy density ln2\ln 2. This enforces a first order SSB phase transition into this phase, as observed in ED and verified in the large SS limit on an exactly solvable Rokhsar-Kivelson line. The condensate has an SSB order parameter being the local in-plane spin, which points in angles related by the chaotic Bernoulli (dyadic) map and thus is effectively random. Moreover, we show the condensate exhibits non-decaying local autocorrelations, and does not have an off-diagonal long-range order. The quantum breakdown condensate thus behaves as a disorder-free quantum glass and is beyond the existing classifications of phases of matter.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.21847,
  title  = {Quantum Breakdown Condensate as a Disorder-Free Quantum Glass},
  author = {Yu-Min Hu and Zhaoyu Han and Biao Lian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.21847},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

7+7 pages, 4+5 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:41:11.278Z