2015/05/31 by Zhe-Xuan Gong, Mohammad F. Maghrebi, Anzi Hu +3 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas #physics.atom-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.93.041102
published as Phys. Rev. B 93, 041102 (2016) · Accepted version. See the supplemental information on the APS website
arxiv created 2016/01/12 · arxiv updated 2016/01/13
Topological phases of matter are primarily studied in systems with short-range interactions. In nature, however, non-relativistic quantum systems often exhibit long-range interactions. Under what conditions topological phases survive such interactions, and how they are modified when they do, is largely unknown. By studying the symmetry-protected topological phase of an antiferromagnetic spin-1 chain with 1/rα interactions, we show that two very different outcomes are possible, depending on whether or not the interactions are frustrated. While non-frustrated long-range interactions can destroy the topological phase for α\lesssim3, the topological phase survives frustrated interactions for all α>0. Our conclusions are based on strikingly consistent results from large-scale matrix-product-state simulations and effective-field-theory calculations, and we expect them to hold for more general interacting spin systems. The models we study can be naturally realized in trapped-ion quantum simulators, opening the prospect for experimental investigation of the issues confronted here.