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A key feature of the newly discovered altermagnet is that its spin degeneracy is lifted, although it has an antiferromagnetic order and zero net magnetization. In this work, we investigate a frustrated spin-1/2 $J_1$-$J_2$-$\delta$ Heisenberg model on the square lattice by the tensor network methodin combination with the linear spin-wave theory, with our focus on both the magnon excitations and longitudinal excitations.For a small $J_2$ and a finite range of $\delta$ we demonstrate that such a model hosts an altermagnetic ground state. Its magnon spectrum is split into two branches and the largest splitting occurs at $\left(\pm\pi/2, \pm\pi/2\right)$ in the Brillouin zone. The magnitudes of splitting in the two magnon modes are equal with respect to the case of $\delta=0$. Dynamical spin structure factors show that the low-energy peak in the longitudinal spectral weight around $(\pi/2, \pi/2)$ is also split, and thus the relative positions of the magnon modes and longitudinal modes in energy may change in the presence of a finite $\delta$. These findings demonstrate that the altermagnets harbor more complex quantum dynamics than the conventional collinear antiferromagnets., Comment: The splitting in the low-energy longitudinal spectral peak is explained

The Kitaev magnets with bond-dependent interactions have garnered considerable attention in recent years for their ability to harbor exotic phases and nontrivial excitations. The topological magnons, which are indicated by nonzero Chern number and thermal Hall conductivity, are proposed to partially explain thermal Hall measurements in real materials. Hitherto, topological magnons have been extensively explored when the magnetic field is normal to the honeycomb plane, but their topological characteristics are less studied in the presence of in-plane magnetic field. Here, we study two distinct in-plane field induced spin-flop phases in the $\Gamma$-$\Gamma'$ model, both of which are off-diagonal couplings that have intimate relation to the Kitaev interaction. The two spin-flop phases are distinguished by their out-of-plane spin components which can be either antiparallel or parallel, thus dubbing antiferromagnetic (AFM) or ferromagnetic (FM) spin-flop phases, respectively. We map out topological phase diagrams for both phases, revealing a rich pattern of the Chern number over exchange parameters and magnetic field. We analytically calculate the boundaries of topological phase transitions when the magnetic field is along the $a$ and $b$ directions. We find that the thermal Hall conductivity and its derivative display contrasting behaviors when crossing different topological phase transitions. The striking difference of the two phases lies in that when the magnetic field is along the $b$ direction, topological magnons are totally absent in the AFM spin-flop phase, while they can survive in the FM analogue in certain parameter regions., Comment: 14+4 pages, 10+3 figures, 3 tables

The higher-spin Kitaev magnets, in which the Kitaev interaction and off-diagonal exchange couplings are overwhelmingly large, have emerged as a fertile avenue to explore exotic phases and unusual excitations. In this work, we study the quantum phase diagram of the spin-1 Kitaev-$\Gamma$ model on the honeycomb lattice using density-matrix renormalization group. It harbours six distinct phases and the intriguing findings are three magnetically ordered phases in which both time-reversal symmetry and lattice symmetry albeit of different sort are broken spontaneously. The chiral spin state originates from the order-by-disorder effect and exhibits an almost saturated scalar spin chirality at the quantum level. Depending on the relative strength of the two interactions, it also features columnar-like or plaquette-like dimer pattern as a consequence of the translational symmetry breaking. In parallel, the nematic ferromagnets are situated at ferromagnetic Kitaev side and possess small but finite ferromagnetic ordering. The lattice-rotational symmetry breaking enforces nonequivalent bond energy along one of the three bonds. Although the intrinsic difference between the two nematic ferromagnets remains elusive, the discontinuities in the von Neumann entropy, hexagonal plaquette operator, and Wilson loop operator convincingly suggest that they are separated via a first-order phase transition., Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. Phys. Rev. B to appear

The noncollinear spin textures provide promising avenues to stabilize exotic magnetic phases and excitations. They have attracted vast attention owning to their nontrivial band topology in the past decades. Distinct from the conventional route of involving the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in a honeycomb magnet, the interplay of bond-dependent Kitaev and $\Gamma$ interactions, originating from the spin-orbit coupling and octahedra crystal field in real materials, has demonstrated to be another source to generate noncollinear spin textures with multiple spins in a magnetic unit cell. Notably, earlier works have revealed a triple-meron crystal (TmX) consisting of eighteen spins in the frustrated Kitaev-$\Gamma$ model. Aligning with previous efforts, here we attempt to identify that the TmX hosts several peculiar features with the help of the linear spin-wave theory. To begin with, the symmetric anisotropic exchanges are beneficial for the existence of nonreciprocal magnons, which are stabilized by an external magnetic field. Further, within the regime of TmX, successive topological phase transitions occur, accompanied by the changes of Chern number in value and thermal Hall conductivity in sign. In addition, topological nature of magnons is also verified by the onset of chiral edge modes in a nanoribbon geometry. Our findings pave the way to study topological phenomena of noncollinear spin textures in potential Kitaev materials., Comment: 11 pages, 6+3 figures

In ordered magnets, the elementary excitations are spin waves (magnons), which obey Bose-Einstein statistics. Similarly to Cooper pairs in superconductors, magnons can be paired into bound states under attractive interactions. The Zeeman coupling to a magnetic field is able to tune the particle density through a quantum critical point (QCP), beyond which a "hidden order" is predicted to exist. Here we report direct observation of the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of the two-magnon bound state in Na$_2$BaNi(PO$_4$)$_2$. Comprehensive thermodynamic measurements confirmed the two-dimensional BEC-QCP at the saturation field. Inelastic neutron scattering experiments were performed to establish the microscopic model. An exact solution revealed stable 2-magnon bound states that were further confirmed by electron spin resonance and nuclear magnetic resonance experiments, demonstrating that the QCP is due to the pair condensation and the phase below saturation field is likely the long-sought-after spin nematic phase., Comment: 53 pages, 31 figures. Accepted by Nature Materials

The Kitaev-type spin chains have been demonstrated to be fertile playgrounds in which exotic phases and unconventional phase transitions are ready to appear. In this work, we use the density-matrix renormalization group method to study the quantum phase diagram of a spin-1 Kitaev chain with a tunable negative single-ion anisotropy (SIA). When the strength of the SIA is small, the ground state is revealed to be a spin-nematic phase which escapes conventional magnetic order but is characterized by a finite spin-nematic correlation because of the breaking spin-rotational symmetry. As the SIA increases, the spin-nematic phase is taken over by either a dimerized phase or an antiferromagnetic phase through an Ising-type phase transition, depending on the direction of the easy axis. For large enough SIA, the dimerized phase and the antiferromagnetic phase undergo a ``Landau-forbidden" continuous phase transition, suggesting new platform of deconfined quantum critical point in spin-1 Kitaev chain., Comment: 11+$\epsilon$ pages, 9 figures. Phys. Rev. B to appear

The Hubbard and related models serve as a fundamental starting point in understanding the novel experimental phenomena in correlated electron materials, such as superconductivity, Mott insulator, magnetism and stripe phases. Recent numerical simulations indicate that the emergence of superconductivity is connected with the next nearest-neighbor hopping $t^\prime$ in the Hubbard model. However, the impacts of complex inter-site electron interaction in the $t^\prime$-Hubbard model are less explored. Utilizing the state-of-art density-matrix renormalization group method, we investigate the $t^\prime$-Hubbard model on a two-leg ladder with inter-site interactions extended to the fourth neighbor sites. The accurate numerical results show that the quasi-long-range superconducting correlation remains stable under the repulsive nearest-neighbor and the next nearest-neighbor interactions though these interactions are against the superconductivity. The ground state properties are also undisturbed by the longer-range repulsive interactions. In addition, inspired by recent experiments on one-dimensional cuprates chain $\mathrm{Ba}_{2-x}\mathrm{Sr}_x\mathrm{CuO}_{3+\delta}$, which implies an effective attraction between the nearest neighbors may exist in the cuprates superconductors, we also show that the attractive interaction between the nearest neighbors significantly enhances the superconducting correlation when it is comparable to the strength of the nearest-neighbor hopping $t^\prime$. Stronger attraction drives the system into a Luther-Emery liquid phase. Nevertheless, with the attraction further increasing, the system enters an electron-hole phase separation and the superconducting correlation is destroyed. Finally, we investigate the effects of on-site Coulomb interaction on superconductivity.

By using the tensor-network state algorithm, we study a spin-orbital model with SU(2)$\times$SU(2)$\times$U(1) symmetry on the triangular lattice. This model was proposed to describe some triangular $d^1$ materials and was argued to host a spin-orbital liquid ground state. In our work the trial wavefunction of its ground state is approximated by an infinite projected entangled simplex state and optimized by the imaginary-time evolution. Contrary to the previous conjecture, we find that the two SU(2) symmetries are broken, resulting in a stripe spin-orbital order with the same magnitude $m=0.085(10)$. This value is about half of that in the spin-1/2 triangular Heisenberg antiferromagnet. Our result demonstrates that although the long-sought spin-orbital liquid is absent in this model the spin-orbital order is significantly reduced due to the enhanced quantum fluctuation. This suggests that high-symmetry spin-orbital models are promising in searching for exotic states of matter in condensed-matter physics., Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures

Recently, dynamical anomalies more than critical slowing down are often observed near both the continuous and first-order phase transition points. We propose that the universal anomalies could originate from the geometric phase effects. A Pancharatnam-Berry phase is accumulated continuously in quantum states with the variation of tuning parameters. Phase transitions are supposed to induce a abrupt shift of the geometric phase. In our multi-level quantum model, the quantum interference induced by the geometric phase could prolong or shorten the relaxation times of excited states at phase transition points, which agrees with the experiments, models under sudden quenches and our semi-classical model. Furthermore, we find that by setting a phase shift of \text{\ensuremath{\pi}}, the excited state could be decoupled from the ground state by quantum cancellation so that the relaxation time even could diverge to infinity. Our work introduces the geometric phase to the study of conventional phase transitions and quantum phase transition, and could substantially extend the dephasing time of qubits for quantum computing., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, minor revision

Spin textures with nontrivial topology hold great promise in future spintronics applications since they are robust against local deformations. The meron, as one of such spin textures, is widely believed to appear in pairs due to its topological equivalence to a half skyrmion. Motivated by recent progresses in high-spin Kitaev magnets, here we investigate numerically a classical Kitaev-$\Gamma$ model with a single-ion anisotropy. An exotic spin texture including three merons is discovered. Such a state features a peculiar property with an odd number of merons in one magnetic unit cell and it can induce the topological Hall effect.Therefore, these merons cannot be dissociated from skyrmions as reported in the literature and a general mechanism for such a deconfinement phenomenon calls for further studies. Our work demonstrates that high-spin Kitaev magnets can host robust unconventional spin textures and thus they offer a versatile platform not only for exploring exotic states in spintronics but also for understanding the deconfinement mechanism in the condensed-matter physics and the field theory., Comment: Suggestions and comments are welcome

The interlayer magnetic interaction in bilayer CrI$_3$ plays a crucial role for its device applications. In this work, we studied the interlayer magnetic interaction in $\pi/3$-twisted bilayer CrI$_3$ using first-principles calculations. Our calculations show that the interlayer coupling can be ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic depending crucially on lateral shift. The strongest antiferromagnetic interlayer interaction appears in the $\bar{A}A$-stacking. The magnetic force theory calculations demonstrate that such an antiferromagnetic interaction is dominanted by the $e_g$-$e_g$ channel. Particularly, the interlayer antiferromagnetic interaction is very sensitive to external pressure. This highly tunable interlayer interaction makes $\pi/3$-twisted bilayer CrI$_3$ a potential building block for magnetic field effect transistors and pressure sensors.

The interplay among anisotropic magnetic terms, such as the bond-dependent Kitaev interactions and single-ion anisotropy, plays a key role in stabilizing the finite-temperature ferromagnetism in the two-dimensional compound $\rm{CrSiTe_3}$. While the Heisenberg interaction is predominant in this material, a recent work shows that it is rather sensitive to the compressive strain, leading to a variety of phases, possibly including a sought-after Kitaev quantum spin liquid [C. Xu, \textit{et. al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{124}, 087205 (2020)]. To further understand these states, we establish the quantum phase diagram of a related bond-directional spin-$3/2$ model by the density-matrix renormalization group method. As the Heisenberg coupling varies from ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic, three magnetically ordered phases, i.e., a ferromagnetic phase, a $120^\circ$ phase and an antiferromagnetic phase, appear consecutively. All the phases are separated by first-order phase transitions, as revealed by the kinks in the ground-state energy and the jumps in the magnetic order parameters. However, no positive evidence of the quantum spin liquid state is found and possible reasons are discussed briefly., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

The key to unraveling intriguing phenomena observed in various Kitaev materials lies in understanding the interplay of Kitaev ($K$) interaction and a symmetric off-diagonal $\Gamma$ interaction. To provide insight into the challenging problems, we study the quantum phase diagram of a bond-alternating spin-$1/2$ $g_x$-$g_y$ $K$-$\Gamma$ chain by density-matrix renormalization group method where $g_x$ and $g_y$ are the bond strengths of the odd and even bonds, respectively. The phase diagram is dominated by even-Haldane ($g_x > g_y$) and odd-Haldane ($g_x < g_y$) phases where the former is topologically trivial while the latter is a symmetry-protected topological phase. Near the antiferromagnetic Kitaev limit, there are two gapped $A_x$ and $A_y$ phases characterized by distinct nonlocal string correlators. In contrast, the isotropic ferromagnetic (FM) Kitaev point serves as a multicritical point where two topological phase transitions meet. The remaining part of the phase diagram contains three symmetry-breaking magnetic phases. One is a six-fold degenerate FM$_{U_6}$ phase where all the spins are parallel to one of the $\pm \hat{x}$, $\pm \hat{y}$, and $\pm \hat{z}$ axes in a six-site spin rotated basis, while the other two have more complex spin structures with all the three spin components being finite. Existence of a rank-2 spin-nematic ordering in the latter is also discussed., Comment: 12+4 pages, 14+4 figures. For a subsequent spin-1 analogy, see arXiv:2104.10725

After decades of debate, now there is a rough consensus that at zero temperature the spin-$1/2$ Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the triangular lattice is three-sublattice $120^\circ$ magnetically ordered, in contrast to a quantum spin liquid as originally proposed. However, there remains considerable discrepancy in the magnetization reported among various methods. To resolve this issue, in this work we revisit this model by the tensor-network state algorithm. The ground-state energy per bond $E_b$ and magnetization per spin $M_0$ in the thermodynamic limit are obtained with high precision. The former is estimated to be $E_b = -0.18334(10)$. This value agrees well with that from the series expansion. The three-sublattice magnetic order is firmly confirmed and the magnetization is determined as $M_0 = 0.161(5)$. It is about $32\%$ of its classical value and slightly below the lower bound from the series expansion. In comparison with the best estimated value by Monte Carlo and density-matrix renormalization group, our result is about $20\%$ smaller. This magnetic order is consistent with further analysis of the three-body correlation. Our work thus provides new benchmark results for this prototypical model., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, new data and references added

We theoretically investigate the unconventional superconductivity in the newly discovered infinite-layer nickelates Nd$_{1-x}$Sr$_{x}$NiO$_{2}$ based on a two-band model. By analyzing the transport experiments, we propose that the doped holes dominantly enter the Ni $d_{xy}$ or/and $d_{3z^{2}-r^{2}}$ orbitals as charged carriers, and form a conducting band. Via the onsite Hund coupling, the doped holes are coupled to the Ni localized holes in the $d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}$ orbital band. We demonstrate that this two-band model could be further reduced to a Hund-Heisenberg model. Using the reduced model, we show the non-Fermi liquid state above the critical $T_{c}$ could stem from the carriers coupled to the spin fluctuations of the localized holes. In the superconducting phase, the short-range spin fluctuations mediate the carriers into Cooper pairs and establish $d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}$-wave superconductivity. We further predict that the doped holes ferromagnetically coupled with the local magnetic moments remain itinerant even at very low temperature, and thus the pseudogap hardly emerges in nickelates. Our work provides a new superconductivity mechanism for strongly correlated multi-orbital systems and paves a distinct way to exploring new superconductors in transition or rare-earth metal oxides., Comment: the paper was expanded, 7 pages, 1 figure

Anisotropic superexchange interaction is one of the most important interactions in realizing exotic quantum magnetism, which is traditionally regarded to originate from magnetic ions and has no relation with the nonmagnetic ions. In our work, by studying a multi-orbital Hubbard model with spin-orbit coupling on both magnetic cations and nonmagnetic anions, we analytically demonstrate that the spin-orbit coupling on nonmagnetic anions alone can induce antisymmetric Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, symmetric anisotropic exchange and single ion anisotropy on the magnetic ions and thus it actually contributes to anisotropic superexchange on an equal footing as that of magnetic ions. Our results promise one more route to realize versatile exotic phases in condensed matter systems, long-range orders in low dimensional materials and switchable single molecule magnetic devices for recording and manipulating quantum information through nonmagnetic anions., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure

A family of spin-orbit coupled honeycomb Mott insulators offers a playground to search for quantum spin liquids (QSLs) via bond-dependent interactions. In candidate materials, a symmetric off-diagonal $\Gamma$ term, close cousin of Kitaev interaction, has emerged as another source of frustration that is essential for complete understanding of these systems. However, the ground state of honeycomb $\Gamma$ model remains elusive, with a suggested zigzag magnetic order. Here we attempt to resolve the puzzle by perturbing the $\Gamma$ region with a staggered Heisenberg interaction which favours the zigzag ordering. Despite such favour, we find a wide disordered region inclusive of the $\Gamma$ limit in the phase diagram. Further, this phase exhibits a vanishing energy gap, a collapse of excitation spectrum, and a logarithmic entanglement entropy scaling on long cylinders, indicating a gapless QSL. Other quantities such as plaquette-plaquette correlation are also discussed., Comment: 11+16 pages. npj Quantum Materials (in press). Typos (e.g., central charge) are fixed. Some additional results and references will be considered in future

We find that the first-order quantum phase transitions~(QPTs) are characterized by intrinsic jumps of relevant operators while the continuous ones are not. Based on such an observation, we propose a bond reversal method where a quantity $\mathcal{D}$, the difference of bond strength~(DBS), is introduced to judge whether a QPT is of first order or not. This method is firstly applied to an exactly solvable spin-$1/2$ \textit{XXZ} Heisenberg chain and a quantum Ising chain with longitudinal field where distinct jumps of $\mathcal{D}$ appear at the first-order transition points for both cases. We then use it to study the topological QPT of a cross-coupled~($J_{\times}$) spin ladder where the Haldane--rung-singlet transition switches from being continuous to exhibiting a first-order character at $J_{\times, I} \simeq$ 0.30(2). Finally, we study a recently proposed one-dimensional analogy of deconfined quantum critical point connecting two ordered phases in a spin-$1/2$ chain. We rule out the possibility of weakly first-order QPT because the DBS is smooth when crossing the transition point. Moreover, we affirm that such transition belongs to the Gaussian universality class with the central charge $c$ = 1., Comment: 6+epsilon + 4 pages, 6 + 9 figures

In this paper we introduce an exactly solvable Kondo lattice model without any fine-tuning local gauge symmetry. This model describes itinerant electrons interplaying with a localized magnetic moment via only longitudinal Kondo exchange. Its solvability results from conservation of the localized moment at each site, and is valid for arbitrary lattice geometry and electron filling. A case study on square lattice shows that the ground state is a N\'{e}el antiferromagnetic insulator at half-filling. At finite temperature, paramagnetic phases including a Mott insulator and correlated metal are found. The former is a melting antiferromagnetic insulator with a strong short-range magnetic fluctuation, while the latter corresponds to a Fermi liquid-like metal. Monte Carlo simulation and theoretical analysis demonstrate that the transition from paramagnetic phases into the antiferromagnetic insulator is a continuous $2D$ Ising transition. Away from half-filling, patterns of spin stripes (inhomogeneous magnetic order) at weak coupling, and phase separation at strong coupling are predicted. With established Ising antiferromagnetism and spin stripe orders, our model may be relevant to a heavy fermion compound CeCo(In$_{1-x}$Hg$_{x}$)$_{5}$ and novel quantum liquid-crystal order in a hidden order compound URu$_{2}$Si$_{2}$., Comment: 5+5pages, 7+2 figures, updated according to the published version and some typos are fixed

Motivated by the recent experiment on $\rm{K_2Cu_3O\left(SO_4\right)_3}$, an edge-shared tetrahedral spin-cluster compound [M. Fujihala \textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{120}, 077201 (2018)], we investigate two-leg spin-cluster ladders with the plaquette number $n_p$ in each cluster up to six by the density-matrix renormalization group method. We find that the phase diagram of such ladders strongly depends on the parity of $n_p$. For even $n_p$, the phase diagram has two phases, one is the Haldane phase, and the other is the cluster rung-singlet phase. For odd $n_p$, there are four phases, which are a cluster-singlet phase, a cluster rung-singlet phase, a Haldane phase and an even Haldane phase. Moreover, in the latter case the region of the Haldane phase increases while the cluster-singlet phase and the even Haldane phase shrink as $n_p$ increases. We thus conjecture that in the large $n_p$ limit, the phase diagram will become independent of $n_p$. By analysing the ground-state energy and entanglement entropy we obtain the order of the phase transtions. In particular, for $n_p=1$ there is no phase transition between the even Haldane phase and the cluster-singlet phase while for other odd $n_p$ there is a first-order phase transition. Our work provides comprehensive phase diagrams for these cluster-based models and may be helpful to understand experiments on related materials.

We derive several closed-form expressions for the fidelity susceptibility~(FS) of the anisotropic $XY$ model in the transverse field. The basic idea lies in a partial fraction expansion of the expression so that all the terms are related to a simple fraction or its derivative. The critical points of the model are reiterated by the FS, demonstrating its validity for characterizing the phase transitions. Moreover, the critical exponents $\nu$ associated with the correlation length in both critical regions are successfully extracted by the standard finite-size scaling analysis., Comment: 6+6 pages, 4 figures, PRE under review

We investigate a spin-$1/2$ two-leg honeycomb ladder with frustrating next-nearest-neighbor (NNN) coupling along the legs, which is equivalent to two $J_1$-$J_2$ spin chains coupled with $J_\perp$ at odd rungs. The full parameter region of the model is systematically studied using conventional and infinite density-matrix renormalization group as well as bosonization. The rich phase diagram consists of five distinct phases: A Haldane phase, a NNN-Haldane phase and a staggered dimer phase when $J_{\perp} < 0$; a rung singlet phase and a columnar dimer phase when $J_{\perp} > 0$. An interesting reentrant behavior from the dimerized phase into the Haldane phase is found as the frustration $J_2$ increases. The universalities of the critical phase transitions are fully analyzed. Phase transitions between dimerized and disordered phases belong to the two-dimensional Ising class with central charge $c=1/2$. The transition from the Haldane phase to NNN-Haldane phase is of a weak topological first order, while the continuous transition between the Haldane phase and rung singlet phase has central charge $c=2$., Comment: 14 pages, 17 figures, for latest version and additional information see https://www.physik.uni-kl.de/eggert/papers/index.html

The recent discovery of ferromagnetic single-layer CrI3 creates ample opportunities for studying fundamental properties of atomically-thin magnets. By using first-principles calculations and model analysis, we show that a lateral strain and/or charge doping can have unexpected effects on the magnetic properties of CrI3. In particular, strain tunes the magnetic order and anisotropy: (1) a compressive strain leads to a phase transition from a ferromagnetic insulator to an antiferromagnetic insulator, while (2) a tensile strain can flip the magnetic orientation from off-plane to in-plane. Interestingly, we find that the phase boundary for the first transition is insensitive to charge doping, whereas that of the second one can be significantly modulated by electron doping., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

Motivated by the recent experiment on a rare-earth material YbMgGaO$_4$ [Y. Li \textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{115}, 167203 (2015)], which found that the ground state of YbMgGaO$_4$ is a quantum spin liquid, we study the ground-state phase diagram of an anisotropic spin-$1/2$ model that was proposed to describe YbMgGaO$_4$. Using the density-matrix renormalization group method in combination with the exact diagonalization, we calculate a variety of physical quantities, including the ground-state energy, the fidelity, the entanglement entropy and spin-spin correlation functions. Our studies show that in the quantum phase diagram there is a $120^{\circ}$ phase and two distinct stripe phases. The transitions from the two stripe phases to the $120^{\circ}$ phase are of the first order. However, the transition between the two stripe phases is not the first order, which is different from its classical counterpart. Additionally, we find no evidence for a quantum spin liquid in this model. Our results suggest that additional terms may be also important to model the material YbMgGaO$_4$. These findings will stimulate further experimental and theoretical works in understanding the quantum spin liquid ground state in YbMgGaO$_4$., Comment: minor changes

We study the thermodynamics of an XYZ Heisenberg chain with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, which describes the low-energy behaviors of a one-dimensional spin-orbit-coupled bosonic model in the deep insulating region. The entropy and the specific heat are calculated numerically by the quasi-exact transfer-matrix renormalization group. In particular, in the limit $U^\prime/U\rightarrow\infty$, our model is exactly solvable and thus serves as a benchmark for our numerical method. From our data, we find that for $U^\prime/U>1$ a quantum phase transition between an (anti)ferromagnetic phase and a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid phase occurs at a finite $\theta$, while for $U^\prime/U<1$ a transition between a ferromagnetic phase and a paramagnetic phase happens at $\theta=0$. A refined ground-state phase diagram is then deduced from their low-temperature behaviors. Our findings provide an alternative way to detect those distinguishable phases experimentally., Comment: accepted by Phys. Rev. B, title changed

Since the discovery of the cuprate high-temperature superconductivity in 1986, a universal phase diagram has been constructed experimentally and numerous theoretical models have been proposed. However, there remains no consensus on the underlying physics thus far. Here, we theoretically investigate the phase diagram of hole-doped cuprates based on an itinerant-localized dual fermion model, with the charge carriers doped on the oxygen sites and localized holes on the copper $d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}$ orbitals. We analytically demonstrate that the puzzling anomalous normal state or the strange metal could simply stem from a free Fermi gas of carriers bathing in copper antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations. The short-range high-energy spin excitations also act as the `magnetic glue' of carrier Cooper pairs and induce $d$-wave superconductivity from the underdoped to overdoped regime, distinctly diffrent from the conventional low-frequency magnetic fluctuation mechanism. We further sketch out the characteristic dome-shaped critical temperature $T_c$ versus doping level. The emergence of the pseudogap is ascribed to the localization of partial carriers coupled to the local copper moments or a crossover from the strange metal to a nodal Kondo-like insulator. Our work provides a consistent theoretical framework to understand the typical phase diagram of hole-doped cuprates and paves a distinct way to the studies of both non-Fermi liquid and unconventional superconductivity in strongly correlated systems., Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure

By performing large-scale density-matrix renormalization group simulations, we investigate a one-dimensional correlated bosonic lattice model with a synthetic spin-orbit coupling realized in recent experiments. In the insulating regime, this model exhibits a symmetry-protected topological phase. This symmetry-protected topological phase is stabilized by time-reversal symmetry and it is identified as a Haldane phase. We confirm our conclusions further by analyzing the entanglement spectrum. In addition, we find four conventional phases: a Mott insulating phase with no long range order, a ferromagnetic superfluid phase, a ferromagnetic insulating phase and a density-wave phase., Comment: Submitted on April 12, 2015, accepted by PRL

We study the ultrafast dynamic process in photoexcited systems and find that the Franck-Condon or Landau-Zener tunneling between the photoexcited state and the ground state is abruptly blocked with increasing the state coupling from nonadiabatic to adiabatic limits. The blockage of the tunneling inhibits the photoexcited state from decaying into the thermalized state and results in an emergence of a metastable state, which represents an entanglement of electronic states with different electron-phonon coupling strengths. Applying this model to the investigation of photoexcited half-doped manganites, we show that the quantum critical transition is responsible for more than three orders of magnitude difference in the ground state recovery times following photoirradiation. This model also explains some elusive experimental results such as photoinduced rearrangement of orbital order by structural rather than electronic process and the structural bottleneck of one-quarter period of the Jahn-Teller mode. We demonstrate that in the spin-boson model there exist unexplored regions not covered in the conventional phase diagram., Comment: 5 pages 4 figures

We study the evolution of magnetic structure driven by a synthetic spin-orbit coupling in a one-dimensional two-component Bose-Hubbard model. In addition to the Mott insulator-superfluid transition, we found in Mott insulator phases a transition from a gapped ferromagnetic phase to a gapless chiral phase by increasing the strength of spin-orbit coupling. Further increasing the spin-orbit coupling drives a transition from the gapless chiral phase to a gapped antiferromagnetic phase. These magnetic structures persist in superfluid phases. In particular, in the chiral Mott insulator and chiral superfluid phases, incommensurability is observed in characteristic correlation functions. These unconventional Mott insulator phase and superfluid phase demonstrate the novel effects arising from the competition between the kinetic energy and the spin-orbit coupling., Comment: 9 fig; English polished, note added

We study the effect of the synthetic spin-orbit coupling in a two-component Bose-Hubbard model in one dimension by employing the density-matrix renormalization group method. A ferromagnetic long-range order emerges in both Mott insulator and superfluid phases resulting from the spontaneous breaking of the $Z_2$ symmetry, when the spin-orbit coupling term becomes comparable to the hopping kinetic energy and the inter-component interaction is smaller than the intra-one as well. This novel effect is expected to be detectable with the present realization of the synthetic spin-orbit coupling in experiments., Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures

We present a systematic study of the anisotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg model in staggered magnetic fields in two dimensions (2D). To mimic real materials, we consider a system of coupled, antiferromagnetic chains, whose interchain interaction can be either ferro- or antiferromagnetic. When the staggered field is commensurate with the magnetic interactions, an energy gap opens immediately and follows a power law as a function of the applied field, similar to the situation in 1D. When the field competes with the interactions, a quantum phase transition (QPT) occurs from a gapless, magnetically ordered phase at low fields to a gapped, disordered regime. We use a continuous-time Monte Carlo method to compute the staggered moment of the ordered phases and the spin gap of the disordered phases. We deduce the phase diagrams as functions of the anisotropy ratio and the applied field, and calculate the scaling behavior of the models in both quantities. We show that in the competitive case, the staggered field acts to maintain a regime of quasi-1D behavior around the QPT, and we discuss as a consequence the nature of the crossover from 1D to 2D physics.

In this paper, the density-matrix renormalization group method is employed to investigate the fractional quantum Hall effect at filling fractions $\nu=1/3$ and 5/2. We first present benchmark results at both filling fractions for large system sizes to show the accuracy as well as the capability of the numerical algorithm. Furthermore, we show that by keeping a large number of basis states, one can also obtain accurate entanglement spectrum at $\nu=5/2$ for large system with electron number up to $N_e=34$, much larger than systems previously studied. Based on a finite-size scaling analysis, we demonstrate that the entanglement gap defined by Li and Haldane is finite in the thermodynamic limit, which characterizes the topological order of the FQHE state., Comment: 6 pages, minor changes

We investigate the effect of anharmonicity on the one-dimensional half-filled Holstein model by using the determinant quantum Monte Carlo method. By calculating the order parameters we find that with and without anharmonicity there is always an transition from a disorder phase to a dimerized phase. Moreover, in the dimerized phase a lattice dimerization and a charge density wave coexist. The anharmonicity represented by the quartic term suppresses the dimerization as well as the charge density wave, while a double-well potential favors the dimerization. In addition, by calculating the correlation exponents we show that the disorder phase is metallic with gapless charge excitations and gapful spin excitations while in the dimerized phase both excitations are gapful., Comment: 5 pages

A system of coupled photonic cavities on a two-dimensional square lattice is systematically investigated using the stochastic series expansion quantum Monte Carlo method. The ground state phase diagram contains insulating phases with integer polariton densities surrounded by a superfluid phase. The finite-size scaling of the superfluid density is used to determine the phase boundaries accurately. We find that the critical behavior is that of the generic, density-driven Mott-superfluid transition with dynamic exponent $z=2$, with no special multicritical points with $z=1$ at the tips of the insulating-phase lobes (as exist in the case of the Bose-Hubbard model). This demonstrates a limitation of the description of polaritons as structureless bosons., Comment: v2: minor changes, references added. 4 pages, 4 figures

Resonant tunneling through quantum dot under a finite bias voltage at zero temperature is investigated by using the adaptive time-dependent density matrix renormalization group(TdDMRG) method. Quantum dot is modeled by the Anderson Hamiltonian with the 1-D nearest-neighbor tight-binding leads. Initially the ground state wave function is calculated with the usual DMRG method. Then the time evolution of the wave function due to the slowly changing bias voltage between the two leads is calculated by using the TdDMRG technique. Even though the system size is finite, the expectation values of current operator show steady-like behavior for a finite time interval, in which the system is expected to resemble the real nonequilibrium steady state of the infinitely long system. We show that from the time intervals one can obtain quantitatively correct results for differential conductance in a wide range of bias voltage. Finally we observe an anomalous behavior in the expectation value of the double occupation operator at the dot $$ as a function of bias voltage.

We study a one-dimensional SU(N) Hubbard model with an attractive on-site interaction and $N>2$ at half-filling on the bipartite lattice using density-matrix renormalization-group method and a perturbation theory. We find that the ground state of the SU(N) Hubbard model is a charge density wave state with two-fold degeneracy. All the excitations are found to be gapful, resulting in an insulating ground state, on contrary to that in the SU(2) case. Moreover, the charge gap is equal to the Cooperon gap, which behaves as $-2Nt^2/(N-1)U$ in the strong coupling regime. However, the spin gap $\Delta_{s}$ and the quasiparticle gap $\Delta_{1}$ as well open exponentially in the weak coupling region, while in the strong coupling region, they linearly depend on $U$ such that $\Delta_{s}\sim -U(N-1)$ and $\Delta_{1}\sim -U(N-1)/2$., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures

We investigate low-energy excitations of the one-dimensional half-filled SU(4) Hubbard model with an attractive on-site interaction U < 0 using the density matrix renormalization group method as well as a perturbation theory. We find that the ground state is a charge density wave state with a long range order. The ground state is completely incompressible since all the excitations are gapful. The charge gap which is the same as the four-particle excitation gap is a non-monotonic function of U, while the spin gap and others increase with increasing |U| and have linear asymptotic behaviors., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted

We study low-energy excitations in antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chains with a staggered field which splits the spectrum into a longitudinal and a transverse branch. Bound states are found to exist inside the field induced gap in both branches. They originate from the edge effects and are inherent to spin-chain materials. The sine-Gordon scaling $h_s^{2/3}|\log h_s|^{1/6}$ ($h_s$: the staggered field) provides an accurate description for the gap and midgap energies in the transverse branch for $S=1/2$ and the midgap energies in both branches for $S=3/2$ over a wide range of magnetic field; however, it can fit other low-energy excitations only at much lower field. Moreover, the integer-spin S=1 chain displays scaling behavior that does not fit this scaling law. These results reveal intriguing features of magnetic excitations in spin-chain materials that deserve further investigation., Comment: 4 pages, 4figures

We study the low-energy excitations of the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain and $N$-leg ($N$=2, 3, 4) ladders in a staggered magnetic field $h_s$. We show that $h_s$ induces gap and midgap states in all the cases and examine their field scaling behavior. A modified boundary scheme is devised to extract accurate bulk excitation behavior. The gap values converge rapidly as $N$ increases, leading to a field scaling exponent $\gamma=1/2$ for both the longitudinal and transverse gaps of the square lattice ($N \to \infty$). The midgap states induced by the boundary edge effects share the bulk gap scaling exponents but their overall scaling behavior in the large-N limit needs further investigation., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. B

We study the entanglement properties of anisotropic open spin one-half Heisenberg chains with a modified central bond. The entanglement entropy between the two half-chains is calculated with the density-matrix renormalization method (DMRG).We find a logarithmic behaviour with an effective central charge c' varying with the length of the system. It flows to one in the ferromagnetic region and to zero in the antiferromagnetic region of the model. In the XX case it has a non-universal limit and we recover previous results., Comment: 8 pages, 15 figures

The largest eigenvalue of the reduced density matrix for quantum chains is shown to have a simple physical interpretation and power-law behaviour in critical systems. This is verified numerically for XXZ spin chains., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, note added, typo corrected