Hermitian and Non-Hermitian Topological Transitions Characterized by Manifold Distance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a universal manifold distance measure based on fidelity and trace distance to characterize topological phase transitions across various systems, including Hermitian, non-Hermitian, and gapless models.

Contribution

It proposes a new topological invariant, the manifold distance, that overcomes limitations of traditional invariants at critical points and applies broadly to different topological systems.

Findings

MD exhibits divergent behavior near critical points.

MD is more universal than the strange correlator.

Applicable to non-Hermitian and long-range entangled systems.

Abstract

Topological phases are generally characterized by topological invariants denoted by integer numbers. However, different topological systems often require different topological invariants to measure, and theses definition usually fail at critical points. Therefore, it's challenging to predict what would occur during the transformation between two different topological phases. To address these issues, we propose a general definition based on fidelity and trace distance from quantum information theory: manifold distance (MD). This definition does not rely on the berry connection but rather on the information of the two manifolds - their ground state wave functions. Thus, it can measure different topological systems (including traditional band topology models, non-Hermitian systems, and gapless systems, etc.) and exhibit some universal laws during the transformation between two topological phases. Our research demonstrates for different topological manifolds, the change rate (first-order derivative) or susceptibility (second-order derivative) of MD exhibit various divergent behaviors near the critical points. Compared to the strange correlator, which could be used as a diagnosis for short-range entangled states in 1D and 2D, MD is more universal and could be applied to non-Hermitian systems and long-range entangled states. For subsequent studies, we expect the method to be generalized to real-space or non-lattice models, in order to facilitate the study of a wider range of physical platforms such as open systems and many-body localization.