Charge glass from supercooling topological-ordered liquid

TL;DR

This paper uncovers a unique crystallization process in topological-ordered liquids driven by diffusive triplets, leading to glassy behavior and slow dynamics, distinct from conventional phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel understanding of phase transition dynamics in topological-ordered liquids, highlighting diffusive triplet motion as the key mechanism behind charge glass formation.

Findings

Crystallization involves diffusive motion of triplets, not nucleation.

The phase transition exhibits anomalously slow dynamics with Avrami exponent ~0.5.

The model explains charge glass behavior in organic conductors.

Abstract

Topological order characterizes a class of quantum and classical many-body liquid states that escape the conventional classification by spontaneous symmetry breaking. Many properties of the topological-ordered states still await a clear understanding, and nature of phase transition dynamics is one of them. Normally, when a liquid freezes into a solid, crystallization starts with nucleation and a solid domain quickly grows on the surface of the expanding nucleus, and the domains evolve into macroscopic size. In this work, we reveal that the crystallization of the topological-ordered liquid proceeds in a fundamentally different way. The topological-ordered phase is characterized by a global conserved quantity and its conjugate fractional charge, which we call a flux and a triplet in our working system of the charge Ising model on a triangular lattice. In contrast to the normal crystallization process, the phase transition is driven by the diffusive motion of triplets, which is required to change the value of conserved fluxes to exit the topological-ordered phase. In order to complete crystallization, triplets must spend a divergently long time to diffuse over a macroscopic distance across the system, which results in glassy behavior. Reflecting the diffusive motion of triplets, the initial crystallization process shows slowing down with unusually small Avrami exponent $\sim0.5$. These anomalous dynamics are specific to the crystallization from topological-ordered liquid, and well account for the main features of charge glass behavior exhibited by the organic conductors, $\theta$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$X(SCN)$_4$.