English

Quantum criticality in Ising chains with random hyperuniform couplings

Statistical Mechanics 2019-10-23 v2 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks Quantum Gases Strongly Correlated Electrons Quantum Physics

Abstract

We study quantum phase transitions in transverse-field Ising spin chains in which the couplings are random but hyperuniform, in the sense that their large-scale fluctuations are suppressed. We construct a one-parameter family of disorder models in which long-wavelength fluctuations are increasingly suppressed as a parameter α\alpha is tuned. For α=0\alpha = 0, one recovers the familiar infinite-randomness critical point. For 0<α<10 < \alpha < 1, we find a line of infinite-randomness critical points with continuously varying critical exponents; however, the Griffiths phases that flank the critical point at α=0\alpha = 0 are absent at any α>0\alpha > 0. When α>1\alpha > 1, randomness is a dangerously irrelevant perturbation at the clean Ising critical point, leading to a state we call the critical Ising insulator. In this state, thermodynamics and equilibrium correlation functions behave as in the clean system. However, all finite-energy excitations are localized, thermal transport vanishes, and autocorrelation functions remain finite in the long-time limit. We characterize this line of hyperuniform critical points using a combination of perturbation theory, renormalization-group methods, and exact diagonalization.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1809.04595,
  title  = {Quantum criticality in Ising chains with random hyperuniform couplings},
  author = {Philip J. D. Crowley and C. R. Laumann and Sarang Gopalakrishnan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.04595},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

20 pages, 22 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T04:04:20.396Z