Recently it was highlighted that one-dimensional antiferromagnetic spin models with frustrated boundary conditions, i.e. periodic boundary conditions in a ring with an odd number of elements, may show very peculiar behavior. Indeed the presence of frustrated boundary conditions can destroy the local magnetic orders presented by the models when different boundary conditions are taken into account and induce novel phase transitions. Motivated by these results, we analyze the effects of the introduction of frustrated boundary conditions on several models supporting (symmetry protected) topological orders, and compare our results with the ones obtained with different boundary conditions. None of the topological order phases analyzed are altered by this change. This observation leads naturally to the conjecture that topological phases of one-dimensional systems are in general not affected by topological frustration.
Ginzburg-Landau theory of continuous phase transitions implicitly assumes that microscopic changes are negligible in determining the thermodynamic properties of the system. In this work we provide an example that clearly contrasts with this assumption. We show that topological frustration can change the nature of a second order quantum phase transition separating two different ordered phases. Even more remarkably, frustration is triggered simply by a suitable choice of boundary conditions in a 1D chain. While with every other BC each of two phases is characterized by its own local order parame…
In quantum many-body systems with local interactions, the effects of boundary conditions are considered to be negligible, at least for sufficiently large systems. Here we show an example of the opposite. We consider a spin chain with two competing interactions, set on a ring with an odd number of sites. When only the dominant interaction is antiferromagnetic, and thus induces topological frustration, the standard antiferromagnetic order (expressed by the magnetization) is destroyed. When also the second interaction turns from ferro to antiferro, an antiferromagnetic order characterized by a si…
"Three is a crowd" is an old proverb that applies as much to social interactions, as it does to frustrated configurations in statistical physics models. Accordingly, social relations within a triangle deserve special attention. With this motivation, we explore the impact of topological frustration on the evolutionary dynamics of the snowdrift game on a triangular lattice. This topology provides an irreconcilable frustration, which prevents anti-coordination of competing strategies that would be needed for an optimal outcome of the game. By using different strategy updating protocols, we observ…
Frustration-driven topological textures on the honeycomb lattice: antiferromagnetic meron-antimeron and skyrmion crystals emerging from spiral spin liquids
We study the phase diagram of a topological string-net type lattice model in the presence of geometrically frustrated interactions. These interactions drive several phase transitions that reduce the topological order, leading to a rich phase diagram including both Abelian ($\mathbb{Z}_2$) and non-Abelian ($\text{Ising}\times \overline{\text{Ising}}$) topologically ordered phases, as well as phases with broken translational symmetry. Interestingly, one of these phases simultaneously exhibits (Abelian) topological order and long-ranged order due to translational symmetry breaking, with non-trivi…
Herein, fundamentals of topology and symmetry breaking are used to understand crystallization and geometrical frustration in topologically close-packed structures. This frames solidification from a new perspective that is unique from thermodynamic discussions. Crystallization is considered as developing from undercooled liquids, in which orientational order is characterized by a surface of a sphere in four-dimensions (quaternion) with the binary polyhedral representation of the preferred orientational order of atomic clustering inscribed on its surface. As a consequence of the dimensionality o…
The network of interactions in complex systems, strongly influences their resilience, the system capability to resist to external perturbations or structural damages and to promptly recover thereafter. The phenomenon manifests itself in different domains, e.g. cascade failures in computer networks or parasitic species invasion in ecosystems. Understanding the networks topological features that affect the resilience phenomenon remains a challenging goal of the design of robust complex systems. We prove that the non-normality character of the network of interactions amplifies the response of the…
Motzkin spin chains are frustration-free models whose ground-state is a combination of Motzkin paths. The weight of such path contributions can be controlled by a deformation parameter t. As a function of the latter these models, beside the formation of domain wall structures, exhibit a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition for t=1 and gapped Haldane topological orders with constant decay of the string order parameters for t < 1. By means of numerical calculations we show that the topological properties of the Haldane phases depend on the spin value. This allows to classify differen…
Error Resilience of Fracton Codes and Near Saturation of Code-Capacity Threshold in Three Dimensions
University of Munich（慕尼黑大学）；Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST)（慕尼黑量子科学与技术中心）；Universidad Complutense（康普卢顿塞大学）；Universidad Politócnica de Madrid（马德里理工大学）；Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所）；Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale（合肥微尺度物质科学国家研究中心）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学物理学院）；Shanghai Research Center for Quantum Science（上海量子科学研究中心）；CAS Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics（中国科学院量子信息与量子物理学前沿卓越创新中心）
Evolutionary optimisation algorithm is employed to design networks of phase-repulsive oscillators that achieve an anti-phase synchronised state. By introducing the link frustration, the evolutionary process is implemented by rewiring the links with probability proportional to their frustration, until the final network displaying a unique non-frustrated dynamical state is reached. Resulting networks are bipartite and with zero clustering. In addition, the designed non-frustrated anti-phase synchronised networks display a clear topological scale. This contrasts usually studied cases of networks …
The topological classification of a series of frustration-induced spin-gap phases in the spin-1/2 ferromagnetic--antiferromagnetic alternating Heisenberg chain with next-nearest-neighbour interaction reported in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 82, 064703 (2013) is confirmed using two kinds of entanglement spectra defined by different divisions of the whole chain. For the numerical calculation, the iDMRG method is used. The results are consistent with the valence bond solid picture proposed in the previous paper.
We study lattice melting in two dimensional antiferromagnets. We argue that, for strong enough magnetic interactions, single lattice dislocations are prohibitive due to magnetic frustration. This leads to a melting scenario in which a tetratic phase, composed of free dislocation pairs and bound disclinations, separates the solid from the liquid phases. We demonstrate this phase numerically in a system of hard spheres confined between parallel plates, where spins are represented by the the heights of the spheres. We find that, in the tetratic phase, the spins are as antiferromagnetically ordere…
This perspective will overview an emerging paradigm for self-organized soft materials, {\it geometrically-frustrated assemblies}, where interactions between self-assembling elements (e.g. particles, macromolecules, proteins) favor local packing motifs that are incompatible with uniform global order in the assembly. This classification applies to a broad range of material assemblies including self-twisting protein filament bundles, amyloid fibers, chiral smectics and membranes, particle-coated droplets, curved protein shells and phase-separated lipid vesicles. In assemblies, geometric frustrati…
