Related papers: Identification of gapless phases by a twisting ope…
We consider a one-dimensional, time-reversal-invariant system with attractive interactions and spin-orbit coupling. Such a system is gapless due to the strong quantum fluctuations of the superconducting order parameter. However, we show…
Topology in quantum matter is typically associated with gapped phases. For example, in symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases, the bulk energy gap localizes edge modes near the boundary. In this work we identify a new mechanism that…
Since the discovery of phase transitions driven by topological defects, the classification of phases of matter has been significantly extended beyond Ginzburg and Landau's paradigm of spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB). In particular,…
Symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases are commonly required to have an energy gap, but recent work has extended the concept to gapless settings. This raises a natural question: what happens at transitions between inequivalent gapless…
We ask whether a local Hamiltonian with a featureless (fully gapped and nondegenerate) ground state could exist in certain quantum spin systems. We address this question by mapping the vicinity of certain quantum critical point (or gapless…
Frustration-free (FF) spin chains have a property that their ground state minimizes all individual terms in the chain Hamiltonian. We ask how entangled the ground state of a FF quantum spin-s chain with nearest-neighbor interactions can be…
For the classification of topological phases of matter, an important consideration is whether a system is spinless or spinful, as these two classes have distinct symmetry algebra that gives rise to fundamentally different topological…
We study $(1+1)$-dimensional $SU(N)$ spin systems in the presence of the global $SU(N)$ rotation and lattice translation symmetries. By matching the mixed anomaly of the $PSU(N)\times\mathbb{Z}$ symmetry in the continuum limit, we identify…
Spin-orbital entanglement in quantum spin-orbital systems is quantified by a reduced von Neumann entropy, and is calculated for the ground state of a coupled spin-orbital chain with $SU(2)\times SU(2)$ symmetry. By analyzing the…
Recent numerical and theoretical studies on the two-dimensional $J$-$Q_3$ model suggests that the deconfined quantum critical point is actually a $SO(5)$-symmetry-enhanced first-order phase transition that is spontaneously broken to $O(4)$.…
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases are gapped quantum phases which host symmetry-protected gapless edge excitations. On the other hand, the edge states can be gapped by spontaneously breaking symmetry. We show that topological…
An interesting feature of spin-1/2 chains with a gap is that they undergo a commensurate-incommensurate transition in the presence of an external magnetic field $H$. The system is in a gapless incommensurate regime for all values of the…
We analyse in depth an $S_3$-invariant nearest-neighbor quantum chain in the region of a U(1)-invariant self-dual multicritical point. We find four distinct proximate gapped phases. One has three-state Potts order, corresponding to…
A fundamental dichotomous classification for all physical systems is according to whether they are spinless or spinful. This is especially crucial for the study of symmetry-protected topological phases, as the two classes have distinct…
We study gapless phases in (3+1)d in the presence of 1-form and non-invertible duality symmetries. Using the Symmetry Topological Field Theory (SymTFT) approach, we classify the gapless symmetry-protected (gSPT) phases in these setups, with…
According to the classification using projective representations of the SO(3) group, there exist two topologically distinct gapped phases in spin-1 chains. The symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase possesses half-integer projective…
To describe the spin-orbital energy gap formation in the one-dimensional symmetrically coupled spin-orbital model, we propose a simple mean field theory based on an SU(4) constraint fermion representation of spins and orbitals. A…
We investigate entanglement spectra of the SO(3) bilinear-biquadratic spin-1 chain, a model with phases exhibiting spontaneous symmetry breaking (both translation and spin rotation), points of enlarged symmetry, and a symmetry-protected…
The Lieb-Schultz-Mattis (LSM) theorem states that a spin system with translation and spin rotation symmetry and half-integer spin per unit cell does not admit a gapped symmetric ground state lacking fractionalized excitations. That is, the…
We study a spin-1/2 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…