Strange correlations in spin-1 Heisenberg antiferromagnets

• Main Authors: Wierschem, Keola, Sengupta, Pinaki
• Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Physics::Descriptive and experimental mechanics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/100195; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/24093
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

We study the behavior of the recently proposed “strange correlator” [Y.-Z. You, Z. Bi, A. Rasmussen, K. Slagle, and C. Xu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 247202 (2014)] in spin-1 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chains with uniaxial single-ion anisotropy. Using projective quantum Monte Carlo, we are able to directly access the strange correlator in a variety of phases, as well as to examine its critical behavior at a quantum phase transition between trivial and nontrivial symmetry protected topological phases. After finding the expected long-range behavior in these two symmetry conserving phases, we go on to verify the topological nature of two-leg and three-leg spin-1 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic ladders. This demonstrates the power of the strange correlator in distinguishing between trivial and nontrivial symmetry protected topological phases.