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Size-driven quantum phase transitions

delete2017-12-19
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OA
AI
J
Johannes Bausch *
T
Toby S. Cubitt
Á
Ángelo Lucia
D
David Pérez-Garcı́a
M
Michael M. Wolf
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1705042114delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Can the properties of the thermodynamic limit of a many-body quantum system be extrapolated by analyzing a sequence of finite-size cases? We present models for which such an approach gives completely misleading results: translationally invariant, local Hamiltonians on a square lattice with open boundary conditions and constant spectral gap, which have a classical product ground state for all system sizes smaller than a particular threshold size, but a ground state with topological degeneracy for all system sizes larger than this threshold. Starting from a minimal case with spins of dimension 6 and threshold lattice size 15 x 15, we show that the latter grows faster than any computable function with increasing local spin dimension. The resulting effect may be viewed as a unique type of quantum phase transition that is driven by the size of the system rather than by an external field or coupling strength. We prove that the construction is thermally robust, showing that these effects are in principle accessible to experimental observation.
Keywords:
quantum phase transition
condensed matter physics
finite-size effects
toric code
Wang tiling
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Journal

P
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IF:
9.1
Papers:
10.8W
Citations:
73.5W

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C
Complutense University of Madrid
Scholars:
2.6W
Papers: 2.2W
Citations: 31
U
University College London
Scholars:
7.9W
Papers: 6.2W
Citations: 15.7W
U
University of Cambridge
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7.7W
Papers: 7.1W
Citations: 13.7W
U
university of london
Scholars:
21.5W
Papers: 19.7W
Citations: 305
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