Neutron scattering investigation of proposed Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions in the triangular-lattice Ising antiferromagnet TmMgGaO4
Zhiling Dun, Marcus Daum, Raju Baral, Henry E. Fischer, Huibo Cao, Yaohua Liu, Matthew B. Stone, Jose A. Rodriguez-Rivera, Eun Sang Choi, Qing Huang, Haidong Zh… 展开作者
Zhiling Dun, Marcus Daum, Raju Baral, Henry E. Fischer, Huibo Cao, Yaohua Liu, Matthew B. Stone, Jose A. Rodriguez-Rivera, Eun Sang Choi, Qing Huang, Haidong Zhou, Martin Mourigal, Benjamin Frandsen
The transverse-field Ising model on the triangular lattice is expected to host an intermediate finite-temperature Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) phase through a mapping of the spins on each triangular unit to a complex order parameter. TmMgGaO$_4$ is a candidate material to realize such physics due to the non-Kramers nature of Tm$^{3+}$ ion and the resulting two-singlet single-ion ground state. Using inelastic neutron scattering, we confirm this picture by determining the leading parameters of the low-energy effective Hamiltonian of TmMgGaO$_4$. Subsequently, we track the predicted KT phase and related transitions by inspecting the field and temperature dependence of the ac susceptibility. We further probe the spin correlations in both reciprocal space and real space via single crystal neutron diffraction and magnetic total scattering techniques, respectively. Magnetic pair distribution function analysis provides evidence for the formation of vortex-antivortex pairs that characterize the proposed KT phase around 5~K. Although structural disorder influences the field-induced behavior of TmMgGaO$_4$, the magnetism in zero field appears relatively free from these effects. These results position TmMgGaO$_4$ as a strong candidate for a solid-state realization of KT physics in a dense spin system.
We present the ground state wave functions for systems of one-dimensional interacting fermions. It is shown that these systems undergo phase transitions similar to the Kosterlitz-Thouless one independently of the interaction details. In the limit of an infinitely strong interaction the phase transition turns into the usual second order phase transition in a chiral phase. The temperature of the phase transition is calculated.
We study the superconducting Kosterlitz-Thouless transition of the attractive Hubbard model on a two-dimensional triangular lattice using auxiliary field quantum Monte Carlo method for system sizes up to $12\times 12$ sites. Combining three methods to analyze the numerical data, we find, for the attractive interaction of $U=-4t$, that the transition temperature stays almost constant within the band filling range of $1.0 < n < 1.4$, while it is found to be much lower in the $n<1$ region.
The spin relaxation in chromium spinel oxides $A$Cr$_{2}$O$_{4}$ ($A=$ Mg, Zn, Cd) is investigated in the paramagnetic regime by electron spin resonance (ESR). The temperature dependence of the ESR linewidth indicates an unconventional spin-relaxation behavior, similar to spin-spin relaxation in the two-dimensional (2D) chromium-oxide triangular lattice antiferromagnets. The data can be described in terms of a generalized Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) type scenario for 2D systems with additional internal symmetries. Based on the characteristic exponents obtained from the evaluation of …
The spin correlations of the bilayer manganite $La_{1.2}Sr_{1.8}Mn_{2}O_{7}$ have been studied using neutron scattering. On cooling within the paramagnetic state, we observe purely two-dimensional behavior with a crossover to three-dimensional scaling close to the ferromagnetic transition. Below $T_C$, an effective finite size behavior is observed. The quantitative agreement of these observations with the conventional quasi two-dimensional Kosterlitz-Thouless model indicates that the phase transition is driven by the growth of magnetic correlations, which are only weakly coupled to polarons ab…
We investigate spin-vortex excitations in the two-dimensional antiferromagnet on the basis of the nonlinear sigma model. The model of two-dimensional Heisenberg quantum antiferromagnet is mapped onto the (2+1)D nonlinear sigma model. The 2D nonlinear sigma model has an instanton (or skyrmion) solution which describes an excitation of spin-vortex type. Quantum fluctuations of instantons are reduced to the study of the Coulomb gas, and the gas of instantons of the 2D nonlinear sigma model is in the plasma phase. We generalize this picture of instanton gas to the (2+1)D nonlinear sigma model. We …
We find that the temperature dependence of the Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) linewidth observed in Bi$_{0.5}$Sr$_{0.5}$Mn$_{0.9}$Cr$_{0.1}$O$_3$ (BSMCO), as well as in certain other 3-dimensional manganites undergoing antiferromagnetic transitions is satisfactorily described by the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) model. We understand this unexpected result in terms of an effective 2-dimensional XY easy plane anisotropy induced by the magnetic field applied in the EPR experiment. This conclusion is supported by the field dependence of the BKT correlations observed in the quasi two…
We clarify the long-standing controversy concerning the behavior of the ground state fidelity in the vicinity of a quantum phase transition of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type in one-dimensional systems. Contrary to the prediction based on the Gaussian approximation of the Luttinger liquid approach, it is shown that the fidelity susceptibility does not diverge at the transition, but has a cusp-like peak $χ_c- χ(λ)\sim \sqrt{|λ_c-λ|} $, where $λ$ is a parameter driving the transition, and $χ_c$ is the peak value at the transition point $λ=λ_c$. Numerical claims of the logarithmic diverg…
A Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition in the ground state of an antiferromagnetic spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ Heisenberg chain with nearest and next-nearest-neighbor interactions is re-investigated from a different perspective: An unequivocal correspondence is found between components of the scalar product $\langle Ψ_0| Ψ_0 \rangle$ and geometrical objects. One can classify these objects according to whether any two of them can be transformed into each other in a continuous way (belong to the same homotopy class). A finite size scaling of the "connection term`` $\langle Ψ_0|\partial Ψ_0 \rangle$ with …
We investigate non-equilibrium properties of the frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnets on the triangular lattice. Nonequilibrium critical relaxation of frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnets shows a dynamic transition (or, at least, sharp crossover) at the same temperature $T_{\rm u}=0.282 J$ as for static properties due to unbinding of $\mathbb{Z}_2$-vortices. We show that starting from the high-temperature initial state, due to presence of $\mathbb{Z}_2$-vortices in the considering system, in a broad temperature range $T<T_{\rm u}$ the dynamic properties in the intermediate time range are s…
The unusual reentrant phenomenon is observed in the anisotropic 3-state Potts model on a gen- eralized Kagome lattice. By employing the linearized tensor renormalization group method, we find that the reentrance can appear in the region not only under a partial ordered phase as commonly known but also a phase without a local order parameter, which is uncovered to fall into the uni- versality of the Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) type. The region of the reentrance depends strongly on the ratios of the next nearest couplings α = J2 /|J1 | and β = J3 /|J1 |. The phase diagrams in the plane of temperatu…
We investigate the nature of the quantum phase transition out of charge-density-wave phase in the spinless fermion model with nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor interaction at one-third filling. Using an extensive Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) simulations we show that the transition changes it nature. We show that for weak next-nearest-neighbor coupling the transition is of Kosterlitz-Thouless type in agreement with bosonisation predictions. We also provide strong numerical evidences that for large next-nearest-neighbor repulsion the transition belongs to the Pokrovsky-Talapov un…
We find the first example of a quantum Berenzinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition in two spatial dimensions via holography. This transition occurs in the D3/D5 system at nonzero density and magnetic field. At any nonzero temperature, the BKT scaling is destroyed and the transition becomes second order with mean-field exponents. We go on to conjecture about the generality of quantum BKT transitions in two spatial dimensions.
We study the superfluid transition in a quasi-two-dimensional Fermi gas with a magnetic field tuning through a Feshbach resonance. Using an effective two-dimensional Hamiltonian with renormalized interaction between atoms and dressed molecules, we investigate the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition temperature by studying the phase fluctuation effect. We also take into account the trapping potential in the radial plane, and discuss the number and superfluid density distributions. These results can be compared to experimental outcomes for gases prepared in one-dimensional optical lattice…
The disorder-driven metal-insulator transition in the quantum spin Hall systems is studied by scaling analysis of the Thouless conductance $g$. Below a critical disorder strength, the conductance is independent of the sample size $M$, an indication of critically delocalized electron states. The calculated beta function $β=d\ln g/d\ln M$ indicates that the metal-insulator transition is Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) type, which is characterized by bounding and unbounding of vortex-antivortex pairs of the local currents. The KT like metal-insulator transition is a basic characteristic of the quantum s…
Motivated by recent experimental progress in 2D magnetism, we theoretically study spin transport in 2D easy-plane magnets at finite temperatures across the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition, by developing a duality mapping to the 2+1D electromagnetism with the full account of spin's finite lifetime. In particular, we find that the non-conservation of spin gives rise to a distinct signature across the BKT transition, with the spin current decaying with distance power-law (exponentially) below (above) the transition; this is detectable in the proposed experiment with NiPS$_3…
In the two-dimensional superfluidity, the proliferation of the vortices and the anti-vortices results in a new class of phase transition, Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition. This class of the phase transitions is also anticipated in the two-dimensional magnetic systems. However, its existence in the real magnetic systems still remains mysterious. Here we propose a phenomenological model to illustrate that the novel spin-freezing transition recently uncovered in the NMR experiment on the NiGa_2S_4 compound is the BKT-type. The novel spin-freezing state observed in the NiGa_2S_4 po…
This is a set of notes recalling some of the most important results on the XY model from the ground up. They are meant for a junior researcher wanting to get accustomed to the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition in the context of the 2D classical XY model. The connection to the 2D Coulomb gas is presented in detail, as well as the renormalization group flow obtained from this dual representation. A numerical Monte-Carlo approach to the classical XY model is presented. Finally, two physical setting that realize the celebrated Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition are presented: superfluid and l…
The Kosterlitz-Thouless transition is studied from the representation of the systems's ground state wave functions in terms of Matrix Product States for a quantum system on an infinite-size lattice in one spatial dimension. It is found that, in the critical regime for a one-dimensional quantum lattice system with continuous symmetry, the newly-developed infinite Matrix Product State algorithm automatically leads to infinite degenerate ground states, due to the finiteness of the truncation dimension. This results in \textit{pseudo} continuous symmetry spontaneous breakdown, which allows to intr…
Magnetic and electronic properties of a Kondo lattice model with Ising localized spins are studied on an isotropic triangular lattice. By using Monte Carlo simulation, we present that the model shows a rich phase diagram with four dominant states: two-sublattice stripe, three-sublattice ferrimganetic, partially disordered, and Kosterlitz-Thouless like quasi-long-range ordered states. Among them, the partially disordered state and Kosterlitz-Thouless like state are intermediate phases induced by thermal fluctuations in the phase competing regime; they are present only at finite temperatures and…
Weakly disordered two-dimensional superconductors undergo a Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) transition, where at a critical temperature vortices proliferate through the system and destroy the superconducting (SC) order. On the other hand, it was suggested that for large disorder the systems separates into regions of high SC order, and it is the percolation of coherence between these regions that is lost at the critical temperature. Here we demonstrate that these two descriptions are just the dual of each other. A vortex causes loss of local correlations, and thus the loss of percolation of correlatio…
Occurrence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition is investigated by superfluid density measurements for two-dimensional (2D) disordered NbN films with disorder level very close to a superconductor-insulator transition (SIT). Our data show a robust BKT transition even near this 2D disorder-tuned quantum critical point (QCP). This observation is in direct contrast with previous data on deeply underdoped quasi-2D cuprates near the SIT. As our NbN films approach the QCP, the vortex-core energy, an important energy scale in the BKT transition, scales with the superconducting gap, …
At the charge neutral point, graphene exhibits a very unusual high resistance metallic state and a transition to a complete insulating phase in a strong magnetic field. We propose that the current carriers in this state are the charged vortices of the XY valley pseudospin order-parameter, a situation which is dual to a conventional thin superconducting film. We study energetics and the stability of this phase in the presence of disorder.
We show that supersymmetry emerges in a large class of models in 1+1 dimensions with both Z_2 and U(1) symmetry at the multicritical point where the Ising and Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions coincide. To arrive at this result we perform a detailed renormalization group analysis of the multicritical theory including all perturbations allowed by symmetry. This analysis reveals an intricate flow with a marginally irrelevant direction that preserves part of the supersymmetry of the fixed point. The slow flow along this special line has significant consequences on the physics of the mul…
We construct a local interacting quantum dimer model on the square lattice, whose zero-temperature phase diagram is characterized by a line of critical points separating two ordered phases of the valence bond crystal type. On one side, the line of critical points terminates in a quantum transition inherited from a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in an associated classical model. We also discuss the effect of a longer-range dimer interactions that can be used to suppress the line of critical points by gradually shrinking it to a single point. Finally, we propose a way to generalize the quantum H…
We find two systems via holography that exhibit quantum Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transitions. The first is the ABJM theory with flavor and the second is a flavored (1,1) little string theory. In each case the transition occurs at nonzero density and magnetic field. The BKT transition in the little string theory is the first example of a quantum BKT transition in (3+1) dimensions. As in the "original" holographic BKT transition in the D3/D5 system, the exponential scaling is destroyed at any nonzero temperature and the transition becomes second order. Along the way we constru…
We propose an explanation of the superconducting transitions discovered in the heavy fermion superlattices by Mizukami et al. (Nature Physics 7, 849 (2011)) in terms of Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. We observe that the effective mass mismatch between the heavy fermion superconductor and the normal metal regions provides an effective barrier that enables quasi 2D superconductivity in such systems. We show that the resistivity data, both with and without magnetic field, are consistent with BKT transition. Furthermore, we study the influence of a nearby magnetic quantum critical poi…
We present reversible magnetization data of a high quality Bi2212 single crystal and explore the occurrence of 3D-xy critical behavior close to the bulk transition temperature Tc and of Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) behavior. Below and above the presumed Kosterlitz-Thouless transition temperature T_KT we observe the characteristic 2D-xy behavior: a downward shift of the crossing point phenomenon towards T_KT as the field is decreased and sufficiently below T_KT the characteristic 2D-xy relationship between the magnetization an the in-plane magnetic penetration depth. In contrast, the measured tempe…
We perform large-scale, numerically exact calculations on the two-dimensional interacting Fermi gas with a contact attraction. Reaching much larger lattice sizes and lower temperatures than previously possible, we determine systematically the finite-temperature phase diagram of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transitions for interaction strengths ranging from BCS to crossover to BEC regimes. The evolutions of the pairing wavefunctions and the fermion and Cooper pair momentum distributions with temperature are accurately characterized. In the crossover regime, we find that the contact…
Assuming that two-component Fermi gases with opposite artificial magnetic fields on a square optical lattice are well-described by the so-called time-reversal-symmetric Hofstadter-Hubbard model, we explore the thermal superfluid properties along with the critical Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition temperature in this model over a wide-range of its parameters. In particular, since our self-consistent BCS-BKT approach takes the multi-band butterfly spectrum explicitly into account, it unveils how dramatically the inter-band contribution to the phase stiffness dominates the intra-ba…
Despite tremendous theoretical efforts to understand subtleties of the many-body localization (MBL) transition, many questions remain open, in particular concerning its critical properties. Here we make the key observation that MBL in one dimension is accompanied by a spin freezing mechanism which causes chain breakings in the thermodynamic limit. Using analytical and numerical approaches, we show that such chain breakings directly probe the typical localization length, and that their scaling properties at the MBL transition agree with the Kosterlitz-Thouless scenario predicted by phenomenolog…
Quantum many-body edge and extended magnon excitations from the 1/3 -- plateau of the anisotropic Heisenberg model on an open AB$_2$ chain in a magnetic field $h$ are unveiled using the density matrix renormalization group and exact diagonalization. By tuning both the anisotropy and $h$ in the rich phase diagram, the edge states penetrate in the bulk, whose gap closes in a symmetry-protected topological Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. Also, we witness the squeezed chain effect, the breaking of the edge states degeneracy, and a topological change of the excitations from gapped magnons with quad…
We study Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) transitions of the Larkin-Ovchinnikov (LO) phase for a two-dimensional system composed of coupled one-dimensional tubes of fermions. The LO phase here is characterized by a stripe structure (periodic in only one direction) in the order parameter. The low energy excitations involve the oscillation of the stripe and the fluctuation of the phase, which can be described by an effective theory composed of two anisotropic XY models. We compute from a microscopic model the coefficients of the XY models from which the KT transition temperatures are determined. We foun…
We investigate the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions for the square-lattice six-state clock model with the corner-transfer matrix renormalization group (CTMRG). Scaling analyses for effective correlation length, magnetization, and entanglement entropy with respect to the cutoff dimension $m$ at the fixed point of CTMRG provide transition temperatures consistent with a variety of recent numerical studies. We also reveal that the fixed point spectrum of the corner transfer matrix in the critical intermediate phase of the six-state clock model is characterized by the scaling dimension c…
In this Letter we will show that, in the presence of a properly modulated Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction, a $U(1)$ vortex-antivortex lattice appears at low temperatures for a wide range of the DM interaction. Even more, in the region dominated by the exchange interaction, a standard BKT transition occurs. In the opposite regime, the one dominated by the DM interaction, a kind of inverse BKT transition (iBKT) takes place. As temperature rises, the vortex-antivortex lattice starts melting by annihilation of pairs of vortex-antivortex, in a sort of "inverse" BKT transition.
We study the superfluid properties of two-dimensional spin-population-imbalanced Fermi gases to explore the interplay between the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition and the possible instability towards the Fulde-Ferrell (FF) state. By the mean-field approximation together with quantum fluctuations, we obtain phase diagrams as functions of temperature, chemical potential imbalance and binding energy. We find that the fluctuations change the mean-field phase diagram significantly. We also address possible effects of the phase separation and/or the anisotropic FF phase to the …
An attempt is made to find different emergent quantum phases for interacting topological state of quantum matter. Our study is based on the quantum field theoretical renormalization group (RG) calculations. The behaviour of the RG flow lines gives the emergence of different quantum phases for non-interacting and interacting topological state of quantum matter. We show explicitly electron-electron interaction can turn a topologically trivial phase into a non-trivial one and also topological non-trivial phase to topological trivial phase. We show that physics of emergent is go beyond the quantum…
We have made a detailed study of the phase structure for lattice Schwinger model with one flavor of Wilson fermion on the $(m,g)$ plane. For numerical investigation, we develop a decorated tensor renormalization method for lattice gauge theories with fermions incorporating the Grassmann tensor renormalization. Our algorithm manifestly preserves rotation and reflection symmetries. We find not only a parity-broken phase but also a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition by evaluating the central charge and an expectation value of a projection operator into the parity-odd subspace. The B…
A new extension of the attractive Hubbard model is constructed to study the critical behavior near a finite temperature superconducting phase transition in two dimensions using the recently developed meron-cluster algorithm. Unlike previous calculations in the attractive Hubbard model which were limited to small lattices, the new algorithm is used to study the critical behavior on lattices as large as $128\times 128$. These precise results for the first time show that a fermionic system can undergo a finite temperature phase transition whose critical behavior is well described by the predictio…
Proliferation of defects is a mechanism that allows for topological phase transitions. Such a phase transition is found in two dimensions for the XY-model, which lies in the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) universality class. The transition point can be found using renormalization group analysis. We apply renormalization group arguments to determine the nature of BKT transitions for the three-dimensional plaquette-dimer model, which is a model that exhibits fractonic mobility constraints. We show that an important part of this analysis demands a modified dimensional analysis that changes…
Recent experiments show that double layer quantum Hall systems may have a ground state with canted antiferromagnetic order. In the experimentally accessible vicinity of a quantum critical point, the order vanishes at a temperature T_{KT} = κH, where H is the magnetic field and κis a universal number determined by the interactions and Berry phases of the thermal excitations. We present quantum Monte Carlo simulations on a model spin system which support the universality of κand determine its numerical value. This allows experimental tests of an intrinsically quantum-mechanical universal quantit…
