Quantum Monte Carlo study of the transverse-field quantum Ising modelon infinite-dimensional structures

In a number of classical statistical-physical models, there exists acharacteristic dimensionality called the upper critical dimension abovewhich one observes the mean-field critical behavior. Instead of constructinghigh-dimensional lattices, however, one can also considerinfinite-dimensional structures, and the question is whether this mean-fieldcharacter extends to quantum-mechanical cases as well. We thereforeinvestigate the transverse-field quantum Ising model on the globally couplednetwork and on the Watts-Strogatz small-world network by means of quantum MonteCarlo simulations and the finite-size scaling analysis. We confirm that bothof the structures exhibit critical behavior consistent with the mean-fielddescription. In particular, we show that the existing cumulant methodhas difficulty in estimating the correct dynamic critical exponent andsuggest that an order parameter based on the quantum-mechanicalexpectation value can be a practically useful numerical observable todetermine critical behavior when there is no well-defined dimensionality.