English

Product vacua with boundary states

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2012-08-29 v3 Mathematical Physics math.MP Quantum Physics

Abstract

We introduce a family of quantum spin chains with nearest-neighbor interactions that can serve to clarify and refine the classification of gapped quantum phases of such systems. The gapped ground states of these models can be described as a product vacuum with a finite number of particles bound to the edges. The numbers of particles, n_L and n_R, that can bind to the left and right edges of the finite chains serve as indices of the particular phase a model belongs to. All these ground states, which we call Product Vacua with Boundary States (PVBS) can be described as Matrix Product States (MPS). We present a curve of gapped Hamiltonians connecting the AKLT model to its representative PVBS model, which has indices n_L=n_R=1. We also present examples with n_L=n_R=J, for any integer J\geq 1, that are related to a recently introduced class of SO(2J+1)-invariant quantum spin chains.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1112.4097,
  title  = {Product vacua with boundary states},
  author = {Sven Bachmann and Bruno Nachtergaele},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.4097},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

New section on SO(2J+1)-invariant models

R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:53:14.572Z