Entanglement spectra of quantum Heisenberg ladders

Bipartite entanglement measures are fantastic tools to investigate quantum phases of correlated electrons. Here, I analyze the entanglement spectrum of **gapped** two-leg quantum Heisenberg ladders on a periodic ribbon partitioned into two identical periodic chains. Comparison of various entanglement entropies proposed in the literature is given. The entanglement spectrum is shown to closely reflect the low-energy gapless spectrum of each individual edge, for any sign of the exchange coupling constants. This extends the conjecture initially drawn for Fractional Quantum Hall systems to the field of quantum magnetism, stating a direct correspondence between the low-energy entanglement spectrum of a partitioned system and the true spectrum of the "virtual edges". A mapping of the reduced density matrix to a thermodynamic density matrix is also proposed via the introduction of an effective temperature.Comment: Revised version, 9 pages, 7 figures. "Supplementary material" showing additional results for **frustrated** ladder

Properties of holons in the Quantum Dimer Model

I introduce a doped two-dimensional quantum dimer model describing a doped Mott insulator and retaining the original Fermi statistics of the electrons. This model shows a rich phase diagram including a d-wave hole-pair unconventional superconductor at small enough doping and a bosonic superfluid at large doping. The hole kinetic energy is shown to favor binding of topological defects to the bare fermionic holons turning them into bosons, in agreement with arguments based on RVB wave-functions. Results are discussed in the context of cuprates superconductors.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, extensive revision, important new data included in Fig.4(a

Quantum critical phase with infinite projected entangled paired states

A classification of SU(2)-invariant Projected Entangled Paired States (PEPS) on the square lattice, based on a unique site tensor, has been recently introduced by Mambrini et al.~\cite{Mambrini2016}. It is not clear whether such SU(2)-invariant PEPS can either i) exhibit long-range magnetic order (like in the N\'eel phase) or ii) describe a genuine quantum critical point (QCP) or quantum critical phase (QCPh) separating two ordered phases. Here, we identify a specific family of SU(2)-invariant PEPS of the classification which provides excellent variational energies for the $J_1-J_2$ frustrated Heisenberg model, especially at $J_2=0.5$, corresponding to the approximate location of the QCP or QCPh separating the N\'eel phase from a dimerized phase. The PEPS are build from virtual states belonging to the $\frac{1}{2}^{\otimes N} \oplus 0$ SU(2)-representation, i.e. with $N$ "colors" of virtual \hbox{spin-$\frac{1}{2}$}. Using a full update infinite-PEPS approach directly in the thermodynamic limit, based on the Corner Transfer Matrix renormalization algorithm supplemented by a Conjugate Gradient optimization scheme, we provide evidence of i) the absence of magnetic order and of ii) diverging correlation lengths (i.e. showing no sign of saturation with increasing environment dimension) in both the singlet and triplet channels, when the number of colors $N\ge 3$. We argue that such a PEPS gives a qualitative description of the QCP or QCPh of the $J_1-J_2$ model.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, supplementary material as a zip file in source package, v4: minor adds to text + Table I and Appendix D (with 1 figure) adde

Investigation of the chiral antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model using PEPS

A simple spin-$1/2$ frustrated antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model (AFHM) on the square lattice - including chiral plaquette cyclic terms - was argued [Anne E.B. Nielsen, German Sierra and J. Ignacio Cirac, Nature Communications $\bf 4$, 2864 (2013)] to host a bosonic Kalmeyer-Laughlin (KL) fractional quantum Hall ground state [V. Kalmeyer and R. B. Laughlin, Phys. Rev. Lett. $\bf 59$, 2095 (1987)]. Here, we construct generic families of chiral projected entangled pair states (chiral PEPS) with low bond dimension ($D=3,4,5$) which, upon optimization, provide better variational energies than the KL ansatz. The optimal $D=3$ PEPS exhibits chiral edge modes described by the Wess-Zumino-Witten $SU(2)_1$ model, as expected for the KL spin liquid. However, we find evidence that, in contrast to the KL state, the PEPS spin liquids have power-law dimer-dimer correlations and exhibit a gossamer long-range tail in the spin-spin correlations. We conjecture that these features are genuine to local chiral AFHM on bipartite lattices.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, Phys. Rev. B Rapid Com. (in press

Confinement and critical regime in doped frustrated quasi-one dimensional magnets

Ground state and finite temperature properties of a system of coupled frustrated and/or dimerized spin-1/2 chains modeling e.g. the CuGeO$_3$ compound are reviewed. Special emphasis is put on the investigation of the role of impurity doping. A c hain-mean field computation combining exact diagonalisations of the chain hamiltonians together with a mean field treatment of the weak interchain couplings is performed in order to map the microscopic model onto a low-energy effective model. The latter descr ibes a 2-dimensional system of effective spin-1/2 local moments interacting by spacially anisotropic long range spin exchange interactions. An extensive study of this effective model is performed by Stocastic Series Expansion Quantum Monte Carlo for a wide range of temperatures and impurity concentrations. Interesting scaling behaviors of the uniform and staggered spin susceptibilities (above a small ordering Neel temperature due to a residual 3D coupling) can be interpreted in terms of the formation of large clusters of correlated spins carrying a finite magnetization. Such results are reproduced satisfactorily by a new Real Space RG enabling to deal with long range interactions in two-dimensionsComment: Invited paper at SPQS, Sendai July 2004. 8 pages + 15 figure

Nematic and supernematic phases in Kagome quantum antiferromagnets under a magnetic field

Optimizing translationally invariant infinite-Projected Entangled Pair States (iPEPS), we investigate the spin-2 Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) and spin-1 Heisenberg models on the Kagome lattice as a function of magnetic field. We found that the magnetization curves offer a wide variety of compressible and incompressible phases. Incompressible nematic phases breaking the lattice $C_3$ rotation -- for which we propose simple qualitative pictures -- give rise to magnetization plateaux at reduced magnetization $m_z=5/6$ and $m_z=1/3$ for spin-2 and spin-1, respectively, in addition to the $m_z=0$ plateaux characteristic of zero-field gapped spin liquids. Moving away from the plateaux we observe a rich variety of compressible superfluid nematic -- named "supernematic" -- phases breaking spontaneously both point group and spin-U(1) symmetries, as well as a superfluid phase preserving lattice symmetries. We also identify the nature -- continuous or first-order -- of the various phase transitions. Possible connections to experimental spin-1 systems are discussed.Comment: 5 pages + supplemental material (6 pages

Competing Valence Bond Crystals in the Kagome Quantum Dimer Model

The singlet dynamics which plays a major role in the physics of the spin-1/2 Quantum Heisenberg Antiferromagnet (QHAF) on the Kagome lattice can be approximately described by projecting onto the nearest-neighbor valence bond (NNVB) singlet subspace. We re-visit here the effective Quantum Dimer Model which originates from the latter NNVB-projected Heisenberg model via a non-perturbative Rokhsar-Kivelson-like scheme. By using Lanczos exact diagonalisation on a 108-site cluster supplemented by a careful symmetry analysis, it is shown that a previously-found 36-site Valence Bond Crystal (VBC) in fact competes with a new type of 12-site "{\it resonating-columnar}" VBC. The exceptionally large degeneracy of the GS multiplets (144 on our 108-site cluster) might reflect the proximity of the Z_2 dimer liquid. Interestingly, these two VBC "emerge" in {\it different topological sectors}. Implications for the interpretation of numerical results on the QHAF are outlined.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables; Figure 2 and Table II update

Dynamical properties of low dimensional CuGeO3 and NaV2O5 systems

Properties of low-dimensional spin-Peierls systems are described by using a one dimensional S=1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain linearly coupled to a single phonon mode of wave vector pi (whose contribution is expected to be dominant). By exact diagonalizations of small rings with up to 24 sites supplemented by a finite size scaling analysis, static and dynamical properties are investigated. Numerical evidences are given for a spontaneous discrete symmetry breaking towards a spin gapped phase with a frozen lattice dimerization. Special emphasis is put on the comparative study of the two inorganic spin-Peierls compounds CuGeO3 and NaV2O5 and the model parameters are determined from a fit of the experimental spin gaps. We predict that the spin-phonon coupling is 2 or 3 times larger in NaV2O5 than in CuGeO3. Inelastic neutron scattering spectra are calculated and similar results are found in the single phonon mode approximation and in the model including a static dimerization. In particular, the magnon S=1 branch is clearly separated from the continuum of triplet excitations by a finite gap.Comment: 10 pages, RevTex, revised version submitted to Euro. Phys. Rev.

Out-of-equilibrium Correlated Systems : Bipartite Entanglement as a Probe of Thermalization

Thermalization play a central role in out-of-equilibrium physics of ultracold atoms or electronic transport phenomena. On the other hand, entanglement concepts have proven to be extremely useful to investigate quantum phases of matter. Here, it is argued that **bipartite** entanglement measures provide key information on out-of-equilibrium states and might therefore offer stringent thermalization criteria. This is illustrated by considering a global quench in an (extended) XXZ spin-1/2 chain across its (zero-temperature) quantum critical point. A non-local **bipartition** of the chain **preserving translation symmetry** is proposed. The time-evolution after the quench of the **reduced** density matrix of the half-system is computed and its associated (time-dependent) entanglement spectrum is analyzed. Generically, the corresponding entanglement entropy quickly reaches a "plateau" after a short transient regime. However, in the case of the integrable XXZ chain, the low-energy entanglement spectrum still reveals strong time-fluctuations. In addition, its infinite-time average shows strong deviations from the spectrum of a Boltzmann thermal density matrix. In contrast, when the integrability of the model is broken (by small next-nearest neighbor couplings), the entanglement spectra of the time-average and thermal density matrices become remarkably similar.Comment: extended version: 15 pages, 9 figure