Exactly Solvable Topological Phase Transition in a Quantum Dimer Model

TL;DR

This paper analytically studies a quantum dimer model on a triangular lattice, revealing a continuous topological phase transition at a specific parameter value, characterized by changes in topological entropy and critical exponents.

Contribution

It introduces an exactly solvable model exhibiting a topological phase transition with analytical results on critical behavior and topological entropy change.

Findings

Transition at α=3 from Z2 spin liquid to ordered phase

Correlation length diverges as 1/|α-3| at criticality

Topological entropy drops from log2 to 0 across the transition

Abstract

We consider a family of generalized Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) Hamiltonians, which are reverse-engineered to have an arbitrary edge-weighted superposition of dimer coverings as their exact ground state at the RK point. We focus on a quantum dimer model on the triangular lattice, with doubly-periodic edge weights. For simplicity we consider a $2\times1$ periodic model in which all weights are set to one except for a tunable horizontal edge weight labeled $\alpha$. We analytically show that the model exhibits a continuous quantum phase transition at $\alpha=3$, changing from a topological $\mathbb{Z}_2$ quantum spin liquid ($\alpha<3$) to a columnar ordered state ($\alpha>3$). The dimer-dimer correlator decays exponentially on both sides of the transition with the correlation length $\xi\propto1/|\alpha-3|$ and as a power-law at criticality. The vison correlator exhibits an exponential decay in the spin liquid phase, but becomes a constant in the ordered phase, which we explain in terms of loops statistics of the double-dimer model. Using finite-size scaling of the vison correlator, we extract critical exponents consistent with the 2D Ising universality class. Additionally, we analytically show that the topological R\'enyi entropy of order $\infty$ (topological min-entropy) changes from $\log2$ for the quantum spin liquid phase $\alpha<3$, to $0$ for the ordered phase $\alpha>3$, thereby analytically confirming the topological nature of the phase transition.