Symmetry-Enriched Criticality in a Coupled Spin-Ladder

TL;DR

This paper investigates various gapless symmetry-enriched critical phases in a coupled spin ladder, revealing their distinct topological and universality properties through analytical and numerical methods.

Contribution

It identifies and characterizes multiple symmetry-enriched critical phases, including a topological phase, and explores their phase transitions and universality classes.

Findings

Discovery of multiple gapless symmetry-enriched phases.

Identification of a gapless topological phase with protected edge modes.

Observation of multiversality with different universality classes in phase transitions.

Abstract

We study a one-dimensional ladder of two coupled XXZ spin chains and identify several distinct gapless symmetry-enriched critical phases. These have the same unbroken symmetries and long-wavelength description, but cannot be connected without encountering either a phase transition or other intermediate phases. Using bosonizaion, we analyze the nature of their distinction by determining how microscopic symmetries are manifested in the long-wavelength fields, the behavior of charged local and nonlocal operators, and identify the universality class of all direct continuous phase transitions between them. One of these phases is a gapless topological phase with protected edge modes. We characterize its precise nature and place it within the broader classification. We also find the occurrence of `multiversality' in the phase diagram, wherein two fixed phases are separated by continuous transitions with different universality classes in different parameter regimes. We determine the phase diagram and all its aspects, as well as verify our predictions numerically using density matrix renormalization group and a mapping onto an effective spin-1 model.