Impurity-driven transitions in frustrated quantum Ising ring

TL;DR

This paper investigates impurity-driven quantum phase transitions in a frustrated quantum Ising ring, revealing novel phases, long-range correlations, and the effects of ring frustration on symmetry breaking.

Contribution

It uncovers new impurity-induced phases and characterizes their correlation functions, highlighting the role of ring frustration in quantum phase transitions.

Findings

Identification of a gapless topological extended-kink (TEK) phase with long-range correlations

Discovery of a gapped kink zero mode (KZM) phase with spontaneous symmetry breaking

Observation of a steplike nonlocal correlation factor during phase transition

Abstract

We study the quantum phase transitions driven by a point impurity in a chain seamed with ring frustration. Rich phases and quantum phase transitions are uncovered and characterized by both bulk and impurity correlation functions. Nonlocality of the correlation functions are emphasized in manifesting the novel features in the system. We demonstrate that the long-range correlation function can be factorized into local and nonlocal factors in the thermodynamic limit. The gapless topological extended-kink (TEK) phase is disclosed to exhibit long-range correlation but without long-range order, because its ground state is nondegenerate and thus immune to spontaneous symmetry breaking. This conclusion is also true in the classical impurity limit, which is significantly different from that for the open boundary chain without ring frustration. However, spontaneous symmetry breaking does occur in the gapped kink zero mode (KZM) phase and leads to the antiferromagnetic zero mode (AFZM), in which antiferromagnetic order develops in the bulk while entangled states persists locally around the impurity. And as a new feature of quantum phase transition induced by impurity, the transition from the TEK phase to the KZM-AFZM phase is reflected by a steplike nonlocal factor of the correlation function.