Multi-critical topological transition at quantum criticality

TL;DR

This paper studies a topological quantum phase transition between gapless phases in a 1D transverse field Ising model with three-spin interactions, revealing different universality classes and the role of multi-critical points.

Contribution

It identifies and characterizes topological transitions between gapless phases, including the discovery of topologically trivial and active multi-critical points, using various analytical methods.

Findings

Topological transition occurs through a non-trivial multi-critical point in Lifshitz universality class.

Different gapless phases belong to distinct universality classes characterized by winding numbers.

Behavior of Wannier state correlation function confirms the topological transition.

Abstract

The investigation and characterization of topological quantum phase transition between gapless phases is one of the recent interest of research in topological states of matter. We consider transverse field Ising model with three spin interaction in one dimension and observe a topological transition between gapless phases on one of the critical lines of this model. We study the distinct nature of these gapless phases and show that they belong to different universality classes. The topological invariant number (winding number) characterize different topological phases for the different regime of parameter space. We observe the evidence of two multi-critical points, one is topologically trivial and the other one is topologically active. Topological quantum phase transition between the gapless phases on the critical line occurs through the non-trivial multi-critical point in the Lifshitz universality class. We calculate and analyze the behavior of Wannier state correlation function close to the multi-critical point and confirm the topological transition between gapless phases. We show the breakdown of Lorentz invariance at this multi-critical point through the energy dispersion analysis. We also show that the scaling theories and curvature function renormalization group can also be effectively used to understand the topological quantum phase transitions between gapless phases. The model Hamiltonian which we study is more applicable for the system with gapless excitations, where the conventional concept of topological quantum phase transition fails.