2025/04/19 by Blanik, David, Garre-Rubio, José, Schuch, Norbert · 3 citations
#FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.14380
Utilizing the framework of matrix product states, we investigate gauging as a method for exploring quantum phases of matter. Specifically, we describe how symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases and spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) phases in one-dimensional spin systems behave under twisted gauging, a generalization of the well-known gauging procedure for globally symmetric states. Compared to previous, order parameter-based, approaches our analysis is not limited to the case of maximally non-commutative (MNC) phases and we use our findings to propose a generalization of the Kennedy-Tasaki transformation to the non-MNC setting. A key result of our work is that gauging produces configurations characterized by a combination of MNC order and symmetry breaking, when applied to non-MNC SPT phases. More generally, we conjecture a precise correspondence between SSB and non-MNC SPT phases, possibly enabling the detection of such phases using local and string order parameters.