Thermodynamics and criticality of su(m) spin chains of Haldane-Shastry type.

We study the thermodynamics and critical behavior of su(m) spin chains of Haldane-Shastry type at zero chemical potential, both in the A_{N-1} and BC_{N} cases. We evaluate in closed form the free energy per spin for arbitrary values of m, from which we derive explicit formulas for the energy, entropy, and specific heat per spin. In particular, we find that the specific heat features a single Schottky peak, whose temperature is well approximated for m≲10 by the corresponding temperature for an m-level system with uniformly spaced levels. We show that at low temperatures the free energy per spin of the models under study behaves as that of a one-dimensional conformal field theory with central charge c=m-1 (with the only exception of the Frahm-Inozemtsev chain at zero value of its parameter). However, from a detailed study of the ground-state degeneracy and the low-energy excitations, we conclude that these models are only critical in the antiferromagnetic case, with a few exceptions that we fully specify.

Supersymmetric spin chains with nonmonotonic dispersion relation: Criticality and entanglement entropy.

We study the critical behavior and the ground-state entanglement of a large class of su(1|1) supersymmetric spin chains with a general (not necessarily monotonic) dispersion relation. We show that this class includes several relevant models, with both short- and long-range interactions of a simple form. We determine the low temperature behavior of the free energy per spin, and deduce that the models considered have a critical phase in the same universality class as a (1+1)-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) with central charge equal to the number of connected components of the Fermi sea. We also study the Rényi entanglement entropy of the ground state, deriving its asymptotic behavior as the block size tends to infinity. In particular, we show that this entropy exhibits the logarithmic growth characteristic of (1+1)-dimensional CFTs and one-dimensional (fermionic) critical lattice models, with a central charge consistent with the low-temperature behavior of the free energy. Our results confirm the widely believed conjecture that the critical behavior of fermionic lattice models is completely determined by the topology of their Fermi surface.

Critical behavior of su(1|1) supersymmetric spin chains with long-range interactions.

We introduce a general class of su(1|1) supersymmetric spin chains with long-range interactions which includes as particular cases the su(1|1) Inozemtsev (elliptic) and Haldane-Shastry chains, as well as the XX model. We show that this class of models can be fermionized with the help of the algebraic properties of the su(1|1) permutation operator and take advantage of this fact to analyze their quantum criticality when a chemical potential term is present in the Hamiltonian. We first study the low-energy excitations and the low-temperature behavior of the free energy, which coincides with that of a (1+1)-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) with central charge c=1 when the chemical potential lies in the critical interval (0,E(π)), E(p) being the dispersion relation. We also analyze the von Neumann and Rényi ground state entanglement entropies, showing that they exhibit the logarithmic scaling with the size of the block of spins characteristic of a one-boson (1+1)-dimensional CFT. Our results thus show that the models under study are quantum critical when the chemical potential belongs to the critical interval, with central charge c=1. From the analysis of the fermion density at zero temperature, we also conclude that there is a quantum phase transition at both ends of the critical interval. This is further confirmed by the behavior of the fermion density at finite temperature, which is studied analytically (at low temperature), as well as numerically for the su(1|1) elliptic chain.

Level density of spin chains of Haldane-Shastry type.

We provide a rigorous proof of the fact that the level density of all known su(m) spin chains of Haldane-Shastry type associated with the A(N-1) root system approaches a Gaussian distribution as the number of spins N tends to infinity. Our approach is based on the study of the large-N limit of the characteristic function of the level density, using the description of the spectrum in terms of motifs and the asymptotic behavior of the transfer matrix.

Spin chains of Haldane-Shastry type and a generalized central limit theorem.

We show that the density of energy levels of a wide class of finite-dimensional quantum systems tends to a Gaussian distribution as the number of degrees of freedom increases. Our result is based on a variant of the central limit theorem which is especially suited to models whose partition function is explicitly known. In particular, we provide a theoretical explanation of the fact that the level density of several spin chains of Haldane-Shastry type is asymptotically Gaussian when the number of sites tends to infinity.