Published papers

© 2019 American Physical Society. Microscopic spin interactions on a deformed kagome lattice of volborthite are investigated through magnetoelastic couplings. A negative longitudinal magnetostriction ΔL/L<0 in the b axis is observed, which depends on the magnetization M with a peculiar relation of ΔL/L�M1.3. Based on the exchange striction model, it is argued that the negative magnetostriction originates from a pantographlike lattice change of the Cu-O-Cu chain in the b axis, and that the peculiar dependence arises from the local spin correlation. This idea is supported by DFT+U calculations simulating the lattice change and a finite-size calculation of the spin correlation, indicating that the recently proposed coupled-trimer model is a plausible one.

© 2020 American Physical Society. The seminal theoretical works of Berezinskii, Kosterlitz, and Thouless presented a paradigm for phase transitions in condensed matter that are driven by topological excitations. These transitions have been extensively studied in the context of two-dimensional XY models-coupled compasses- A nd have generated interest in the context of quantum simulation. Here, we use a circuit quantum-electrodynamics architecture to study the critical behavior of engineered XY models through their dynamical response. In particular, we examine not only the unfrustrated case but also the fully frustrated case which leads to enhanced degeneracy associated with the spin rotational [U(1)] and discrete chiral (Z2) symmetries. The nature of the transition in the frustrated case has posed a challenge for theoretical studies while direct experimental probes remain elusive. Here we identify the transition temperatures for both the unfrustrated and fully frustrated XY models by probing a Josephson junction array close to equilibrium using weak microwave excitations and measuring the temperature dependence of the effective damping obtained from the complex reflection coefficient. We argue that our probing technique is primarily sensitive to the dynamics of the U(1) part.

© 2020 American Physical Society. Contrary to the conventional wisdom in Hermitian systems, a continuous quantum phase transition between gapped phases is shown to occur without closing the energy gap Δ in non-Hermitian quantum many-body systems. Here, the relevant length scale ζ≃vLR/Δ diverges because of the breakdown of the Lieb-Robinson bound on the velocity (i.e., unboundedness of vLR) rather than vanishing of the energy gap Δ. The susceptibility to a change in the system parameter exhibits a singularity due to nonorthogonality of eigenstates. As an illustrative example, we present an exactly solvable model by generalizing Kitaev's toric-code model to a non-Hermitian regime.

We investigate a quantum phase transition between a Néel phase and a valence bond solid (VBS) phase, each of which breaks a different Z2 symmetry, in a spin-1/2 two-leg XXZ ladder with a four-spin interaction. The model can be viewed as a one-dimensional variant of the celebrated J-Q model on a square lattice. By means of variational uniform matrix product state calculations and an effective field theory, we determine the phase diagram of the model and present evidence that the Néel-VBS transition is continuous and belongs to the Gaussian universality class with the central charge c=1. In particular, the critical exponents β,η, and, ν are found to satisfy the constraints expected for a Gaussian transition within numerical accuracy. These exponents do not detectably change along the phase boundary while they are in general allowed to do so for the Gaussian class.

We study a spin-12 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 phases. Four of them exhibit spontaneous symmetry breaking with either a magnetic or valence-bond-solid (VBS) long-range order. The other four are featureless, i.e., the bulk ground state is unique and does not break any symmetry. The featureless phases include the rung singlet (RS) and Haldane phases as well as their variants, the RS∗ and Haldane∗ phases, in which twisted singlet pairs (|↑↓)+|↓↑))/2 are formed between the two legs. We argue and demonstrate that Gaussian transitions with the central charge c=1 occur between the featureless phases and between the ordered phases while Ising transitions with c=1/2 occur between the featureless and ordered phases. The two types of transition lines cross at the SU(2)-symmetric point, where the criticality is described by the SU(2)2 Wess-Zumino-Witten theory with c=3/2. The RS-Haldane∗ and RS∗-Haldane transitions give examples of topological phase transitions. Interestingly, the RS∗ and Haldane∗ phases, which have highly anisotropic nature, appear even in the vicinity of the isotropic case. We demonstrate that all the four featureless phases are distinguished by topological indices in the presence of certain symmetries.

We study binary Bose-Einstein condensates subject to synthetic magnetic fields in mutually parallel or antiparallel directions. Within the mean-field theory, the two types of fields have been shown to give the same vortex-lattice phase diagram. We develop an improved effective field theory to study properties of collective modes and ground-state intercomponent entanglement. Here, we point out the need to introduce renormalized coupling constants for coarse-grained densities. We show that the low-energy excitation spectra for the two types of fields are related to each other by suitable rescaling with the renormalized coupling constants. By calculating the entanglement entropy, we find that for an intercomponent repulsion (attraction), the two components are more strongly entangled in the case of parallel (antiparallel) fields, in qualitative agreement with recent studies for a quantum (spin) Hall regime. We also find that the entanglement spectrum exhibits an anomalous square-root dispersion relation, which leads to a subleading logarithmic term in the entanglement entropy. All of these are confirmed by numerical calculations based on the Bogoliubov theory with the lowest-Landau-level approximation. Finally, we investigate the effects of quantum fluctuations on the phase diagrams by calculating the correction to the ground-state energy due to zero-point fluctuations in the Bogoliubov theory. We find that the boundaries between rhombic-, square-, and rectangular-lattice phases shift appreciably with a decrease in the filling factor.

We study the ground-state phase diagram of a spin-12 frustrated XXZ ladder, in which two antiferromagnetic chains are coupled by competing rung and diagonal interactions, J⊥ and J×. Previous studies on the isotropic model have revealed that a fluctuation-induced effective dimer attraction between the legs stabilizes the columnar dimer (CD) phase in the highly frustrated regime J⊥≈2J×, especially for ferromagnetic J⊥,×<0. By means of effective field theory and numerical analyses, we extend this analysis to the XXZ model, and we obtain a rich phase diagram. The diagram includes four gapped featureless phases with no symmetry breaking: the rung singlet (RS) and Haldane phases as well as their twisted variants, the RS∗ and Haldane∗ phases, which are all distinct in the presence of certain symmetries. Significantly, the Haldane-CD transition point in the isotropic model turns out to be a crossing point of two transition lines in the XXZ model, and the stripe Néel and RS∗ phases appear between these lines. This indicates a nontrivial interplay between the effective dimer attraction and the exchange anisotropy. In the easy-plane regime, the four featureless phases and two critical phases are found to compete in a complex manner depending on the signs of J⊥,×.