2021/02/28 by Zijian Wang, Qiaoyi Li, Wei Li +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.126.237201
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 237201 (2021) · accepted by Phys.Rev.Lett
arxiv created 2021/05/20 · arxiv updated 2021/06/11
Symmetry-protected topological edge modes are one of the most remarkable phenomena in topological physics. Here, we formulate and quantitatively examine the effect of a quantum bath on these topological edge modes. Using the density matrix renormalization group method, we study the ground state of a composite system of spin-1 quantum chain, where the system and the bath degrees of freedom are treated on the same footing. We focus on the dependence of these edge modes on the global/partial symmetries of system-bath coupling and on the features of the quantum bath. It is shown that the time-reversal symmetry(TRS) plays a special role for an open quantum system, where an emergent partial TRS breaking will result in a TRS-protected topological mode diffusing from the system edge into the bath, thus make it useless for quantum computation.