Spacetime Approach to Phase Transitions

In these notes, the application of Feynman's sum-over-paths approach to thermal phase transitions is discussed. The paradigm of such a spacetime approach to critical phenomena is provided by the high-temperature expansion of spin models. This expansion, known as the hopping expansion in the context of lattice field theory, yields a geometric description of the phase transition in these models, with the thermal critical exponents being determined by the fractal structure of the high-temperature graphs. The graphs percolate at the thermal critical point and can be studied using purely geometrical observables known from percolation theory. Besides the phase transition in spin models and in the closely related $\phi^4$ theory, other transitions discussed from this perspective include Bose-Einstein condensation, and the transitions in the Higgs model and the pure U(1) gauge theory.Comment: 59 pages, 18 figures. Write-up of Ising Lectures presented at the National Academy of Sciences, Lviv, Ukraine, 2004. 2nd version: corrected typo

Height representation of XOR-Ising loops via bipartite dimers

The XOR-Ising model on a graph consists of random spin configurations on vertices of the graph obtained by taking the product at each vertex of the spins of two independent Ising models. In this paper, we explicitly relate loop configurations of the XOR-Ising model and those of a dimer model living on a decorated, bipartite version of the Ising graph. This result is proved for graphs embedded in compact surfaces of genus g. Using this fact, we then prove that XOR-Ising loops have the same law as level lines of the height function of this bipartite dimer model. At criticality, the height function is known to converge weakly in distribution to a Gaussian free field. As a consequence, results of this paper shed a light on the occurrence of the Gaussian free field in the XOR-Ising model. In particular, they prove a discrete analogue of Wilson's conjecture, stating that the scaling limit of XOR-Ising loops are "contour lines" of the Gaussian free field.Comment: 41 pages, 10 figure

Duality and defects in rational conformal field theory

We study topological defect lines in two-dimensional rational conformal field theory. Continuous variation of the location of such a defect does not change the value of a correlator. Defects separating different phases of local CFTs with the same chiral symmetry are included in our discussion. We show how the resulting one-dimensional phase boundaries can be used to extract symmetries and order-disorder dualities of the CFT. The case of central charge c=4/5, for which there are two inequivalent world sheet phases corresponding to the tetra-critical Ising model and the critical three-states Potts model, is treated as an illustrative example.Comment: 78 pages, several figures; v2: typos corrected and some references adde

Topological holography: Towards a unification of Landau and beyond-Landau physics

We outline a holographic framework that attempts to unify Landau and beyond-Landau paradigms of quantum phases and phase transitions. Leveraging a modern understanding of symmetries as topological defects/operators, the framework uses a topological order to organize the space of quantum systems with a global symmetry in one lower dimension. The global symmetry naturally serves as an input for the topological order. In particular, we holographically construct a String Operator Algebra (SOA) which is the building block of symmetric quantum systems with a given symmetry $G$ in one lower dimension. This exposes a vast web of dualities which act on the space of $G$-symmetric quantum systems. The SOA facilitates the classification of gapped phases as well as their corresponding order parameters and fundamental excitations, while dualities help to navigate and predict various corners of phase diagrams and analytically compute universality classes of phase transitions. A novelty of the approach is that it treats conventional Landau and unconventional topological phase transitions on an equal footing, thereby providing a holographic unification of these seemingly-disparate domains of understanding. We uncover a new feature of gapped phases and their multi-critical points, which we dub fusion structure, that encodes information about which phases and transitions can be dual to each other. Furthermore, we discover that self-dual systems typically posses emergent non-invertible, i.e., beyond group-like symmetries. We apply these ideas to $1+1d$ quantum spin chains with finite Abelian group symmetry, using topologically-ordered systems in $2+1d$. We predict the phase diagrams of various concrete spin models, and analytically compute the full conformal spectra of non-trivial quantum phase transitions, which we then verify numerically.Comment: 95+appendices+references=148 page

Ising Model on the Affine Plane

We demonstrate that the Ising model on a general triangular graph with 3 distinct couplings $K_1,K_2,K_3$ corresponds to an affine transformed conformal field theory (CFT). Full conformal invariance of the $c= 1/2$ minimal CFT is restored by introducing a metric on the lattice through the map $\sinh(2K_i) = \ell^*_i/ \ell_i$ which relates critical couplings to the ratio of the dual hexagonal and triangular edge lengths. Applied to a 2d toroidal lattice, this provides an exact lattice formulation in the continuum limit to the Ising CFT as a function of the modular parameter. This example can be viewed as a quantum generalization of the finite element method (FEM) applied to the strong coupling CFT at a Wilson-Fisher IR fixed point and suggests a new approach to conformal field theory on curved manifolds based on a synthesis of simplicial geometry and projective geometry on the tangent planes