The effects of downfolding a Brillouin zone can open gaps and quench the kinetic energy by flattening bands. Quasiperiodic systems are extreme examples of this process, which leads to new phases and critical eigenstates. We analytically and numerically investigate these effects in a two dimensional topological insulator with a quasiperiodic potential and discover a complex phase diagram. We study the nature of the resulting eigenstate quantum phase transitions; a quasiperiodic potential can make a trivial insulator topological and induce topological insulator-to-metal phase transitions through a unique universality class distinct from random systems. This wealth of critical behavior occurs concomitantly with the quenching of the kinetic energy, resulting in flat topological bands that could serve as a platform to realize the fractional quantum Hall effect without a magnetic field.
Quasiperiodic systems are aperiodic but deterministic, so their critical behavior differs from that of clean systems as well as disordered ones. Quasiperiodic criticality was previously understood only in the special limit where the couplings follow discrete quasiperiodic sequences. Here we consider generic quasiperiodic modulations; we find, remarkably, that for a wide class of spin chains, generic quasiperiodic modulations flow to discrete sequences under a real-space renormalization group transformation. These discrete sequences are therefore fixed points of a \emph{functional} renormalizat…
Quantum critical points in quasiperiodic magnets can realize new universality classes, with critical properties distinct from those of clean or disordered systems. Here, we study quantum phase transitions separating ferromagnetic and paramagnetic phases in the quasiperiodic $q$-state Potts model in $2+1d$. Using a controlled real-space renormalization group approach, we find that the critical behavior is largely independent of $q$, and is controlled by an infinite-quasiperiodicity fixed point. The correlation length exponent is found to be $ν=1$, saturating a modified version of the Harris-Luc…
Analytic and numerical results for quasiperiodic tight-binding models are reviewed, with emphasis on two and three-dimensional models which so far are beyond a mathematically rigorous treatment. In particular, we consider energy spectra of aperiodic tight-binding models and the corresponding level statistics, which are well reproduced by random matrix theory. The eigenstates are characterised by multifractal analysis, and a construction of peculiar multifractal states on the Penrose tiling is discussed. We also consider quantum diffusion, and present some results on interacting electron system…
We study the transport properties and the spectral statistics of a one-dimensional closed quantum system of interacting spinless fermions in a quasiperiodic potential which produces a single particle mobility edge in the absence of interaction. For such systems, it has been shown that the many body eigenstates can be of three different kinds: extended and ETH (eigenstate thermalization hypothesis) obeying (thermal), localized and ETH violating (many body localized) and extended and ETH violating (non-ergodic extended). Here we investigate the non-ergodic extended phase from the point of view o…
We numerically study the effect of short ranged potential disorder on massless noninteracting three-dimensional Dirac and Weyl fermions, with a focus on the question of the proposed quantum critical point separating the semimetal and diffusive metal phases. We determine the properties of the eigenstates of the disordered Dirac Hamiltonian ($H$) and exactly calculate the density of states (DOS) near zero energy, using a combination of Lanczos on $H^2$ and the kernel polynomial method on $H$. We establish the existence of two distinct types of low energy eigenstates contributing to the disordere…
We study the many-body localization (MBL) properties of a chain of interacting fermions subject to a quasiperiodic potential such that the non-interacting chain is always delocalized and displays multifractality. Contrary to naive expectations, adding interactions in this systems does not enhance delocalization, and a MBL transition is observed. Due to the local properties of the quasiperiodic potential, the MBL phase presents specific features, such as additional peaks in the density distribution. We furthermore investigate the fate of multifractality in the ergodic phase for low potential va…
Much has been learned about universal properties of entanglement entropies in ground states of quantum many-body lattice systems. Here we unveil universal properties of the average bipartite entanglement entropy of eigenstates of the paradigmatic quantum Ising model in one dimension. The leading term exhibits a volume-law scaling that we argue is universal for translationally invariant quadratic models. The subleading term is constant at the critical field for the quantum phase transition and vanishes otherwise (in the thermodynamic limit), i.e., the critical field can be identified from suble…
We uncover a systematic structure in the single particle phase-diagram of the quasiperiodic Aubry-André-Harper(AAH) model with power-law hoppings ($\sim \frac{1}{r^σ}$) when the quasiperiodicity parameter is chosen to be a member of the `metallic mean family' of irrational Diophantine numbers. In addition to the fully delocalized and localized phases we find a co-existence of multifractal (localized) states with the delocalized states for $σ<1$ ($σ>1$). The fraction of delocalized eigenstates in these phases can be obtained from a general sequence, which is a manifestation of a mathematical pr…
We construct and solve a two-dimensional, chirally symmetric model of Dirac cones subjected to a quasiperiodic modulation. In real space, this is realized with a quasiperiodic hopping term. This hopping model, as we show, at the Dirac node energy has a rich phase diagram with a semimetal-to-metal phase transition at intermediate amplitude of the quasiperiodic modulation, and a transition to a phase with a diverging density of states and sub-diffusive transport when the quasiperiodic hopping is strongest. We further demonstrate that the semimetal-to-metal phase transition can be characterized b…
We explore the stability of three-dimensional Weyl and Dirac semimetals subject to quasiperiodic potentials. We present numerical evidence that the semimetal is stable for weak quasiperiodic potentials, despite being unstable for weak random potentials. As the quasiperiodic potential strength increases, the semimetal transitions to a metal, then to an "inverted" semimetal, and then finally to a metal again. The semimetal and metal are distinguished by the density of states at the Weyl point, as well as by level statistics, transport, and the momentum-space structure of eigenstates near the Wey…
The many-body localization transition in quasiperiodic systems has been extensively studied in recent ultracold atom experiments. At intermediate quasiperiodic potential strength, a surprising Griffiths-like regime with slow dynamics appears in the absence of random disorder and mobility edges. In this work, we study the interacting Aubry-Andre model, a prototype quasiperiodic system, as a function of incommensurate potential strength using a novel dynamical measure, information scrambling, in a large system of 200 lattice sites. Between the thermal phase and the many-body localized phase, we …
We study the localization problem of one-dimensional interacting spinless fermions in an incommensurate optical lattice, which changes from an extended phase to a nonergoic many-body localized phase by increasing the strength of the incommensurate potential. We identify that there exists an intermediate regime before the system enters the many-body localized phase, in which both the localized and extended many-body states coexist, thus the system is divided into three different phases, which can be characterized by normalized participation ratios of the many-body eigenstates and distributions …
Can localization persist when interaction grows infinitely stronger than randomness? If so, is it many-body Anderson localization? How about the associated localization transition in the infinite-interaction limit? To tackle these questions, we study many-body localization (MBL) in a spin-chain model mimicking the Rydberg-blockade quantum simulator with both infinite-strength projection and moderate quasiperiodic modulation. Employing exact diagonalization, Krylov-typicality technique, and time-evolving block decimation, we identify evidence for a constrained MBL phase stabilized by a pure qua…
We perform a unitary renormalization group (URG) study of the 1D fermionic Hubbard model. The formalism generates a family of effective Hamiltonians and many-body eigenstates arranged holographically across the tensor network from UV to IR. The URG is realized as a quantum circuit, leading to the entanglement holographic mapping (EHM) tensor network description. A topological $Θ$-term of the projected Hilbert space of the degrees of freedom at the Fermi surface are shown to govern the nature of RG flow towards either the gapless Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid or gapped quantum liquid phases. This r…
Capturing the interplay between electronic correlations and many-particle entanglement requires a unified framework for Hamiltonian and eigenbasis renormalization. In this work, we apply the unitary renormalization group (URG) scheme developed in a companion work (Ref.[1]) to the study of two archetypal models of stongly correlated lattice electrons, one with translation invariance and one without. We obtain detailed insight into the emergence of various gapless and gapped phases of quantum electronic matter by computing effective Hamiltonians as well as entanglement signatures through their r…
