Super universality of dimerised $SU(N+M)$ spin chains

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that dimerised $SU(N+M)$ spin chains exhibit universal features of the quantum Hall effect, with a diverging correlation length at zero temperature, supporting the super universality conjecture across different parameters.

Contribution

It provides numerical evidence that dimerised $SU(N+M)$ spin chains universally display quantum Hall-like features, regardless of specific $M$ and $N$ values, linking spin chains to quantum field theory concepts.

Findings

Correlation length diverges at zero temperature.

Edge state width observable as physical quantity.

Universal function describes plateau transition singularities.

Abstract

We explore the physics of the quantum Hall effect using the Haldane mapping of dimerised $SU(N+M)$ spin chains, the large $N$ expansion and the density matrix renormalization group technique. We show that while the transition is first order for $N+M >2$, the system at zero temperature nevertheless displays a continuously diverging length scale $\xi$ (correlation length). The numerical results for $(M, N) = (1,3), ~ (2, 2),~(1, 5)$ and $(1, 7)$ indicate that $\xi$ is a directly observable physical quantity, namely the spatial width of the edge states. We relate the physical observables of the quantum spin chain to those of the quantum Hall system (and, hence, the $\vartheta$ vacuum concept in quantum field theory). Our numerical investigations provide strong evidence for the conjecture of super universality which says the dimerised spin chain quite generally displays all the basic features of the quantum Hall effect, independent of the specific values of $M$ and $N$. For the cases at hand we show that the singularity structure of the quantum Hall plateau transitions involves a universal function with two scale parameters that may in general depend on $M$ and $N$. This includes not only the Hall conductance but also the ground state energy as well as the correlation length $\xi$ with varying values of $\vartheta \sim \pi$.