Shadow of complex fixed point: Approximate conformality of Q > 4 Potts model

Journal Article · Fri May 17 00:00:00 UTC 2019 · Physical Review B

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.99.195130 · OSTI ID:1612177

Ma, Han ^[1]; He, Yin-Chen ^[2]

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1. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States); DOE/OSTI
2. Perimeter Inst. for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, ON (Canada)

We study the famous example of weakly first-order phase transitions in the (1 + 1)-dimensional quantum Q-state Potts model with Q > 4. We numerically show that these weakly first-order transitions have approximately conformal invariance. Specifically, we find that entanglement entropy on considerably large system sizes fits perfectly with the universal scaling law of this quantity in conformal field theories (CFTs). This supports that the weakly first-order transitions are proximate to complex fixed points, which are described by recent conjectured complex CFTs. Moreover, the central charge extracted from this fitting is close to the real part of the complex central charge of these complex CFTs. Furthermore, we also study the conformal towers and the drifting behaviors of these conformal data (e.g., central charge and scaling dimensions).

• Research Organization: Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0014415
• OSTI ID: 1612177
• Journal Information: Physical Review B, Journal Name: Physical Review B Journal Issue: 19 Vol. 99; ISSN 2469-9950
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English