Pivoting through the chiral-clock family

TL;DR

This paper explores the integrable chiral clock models using Onsager algebra, revealing a pivot procedure, symmetry-protected topological phases, and a rich phase diagram including trivial, SPT, and gapless phases.

Contribution

It introduces a natural pivot procedure for chiral Hamiltonians and characterizes SPT and RSPT phases across all even and odd N, respectively.

Findings

Identification of a non-abelian dihedral symmetry group D_{2N} in the models.

Derivation of a matrix-product state for the ground state and analysis of entanglement spectrum.

Discovery of a complex phase diagram with multiple ordered and gapless phases.

Abstract

The Onsager algebra, invented to solve the two-dimensional Ising model, can be used to construct conserved charges for a family of integrable $N$-state chiral clock models. We show how it naturally gives rise to a "pivot" procedure for this family of chiral Hamiltonians. These Hamiltonians have an anti-unitary CPT symmetry that when combined with the usual $\mathbb{Z}_N$ clock symmetry gives a non-abelian dihedral symmetry group $D_{2N}$. We show that this symmetry gives rise to symmetry-protected topological (SPT) order in this family for all even $N$, and representation-SPT (RSPT) physics for all odd $N$. The simplest such example is a next-nearest-neighbour chain generalising the spin-1/2 cluster model, an SPT phase of matter. We derive a matrix-product state representation of its fixed-point ground state along with the ensuing entanglement spectrum and symmetry fractionalisation. We analyse a rich phase diagram combining this model with the Onsager-integrable chiral Potts chain, and find trivial, symmetry-breaking and (R)SPT orders, as well as extended gapless regions. For odd $N$, the phase transitions are "unnecessarily" critical from the SPT point of view.