Nonadiabatic Phase Transition with Broken Chiral Symmetry

Phys Rev Lett. 2021 Feb 19;126(7):070602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.070602.

Abstract

We explore nonadiabatic quantum phase transitions in an Ising spin chain with a linearly time-dependent transverse field and two different spins per unit cell. Such a spin system passes through critical points with gapless excitations, which support nonadiabatic transitions. Nevertheless, we find that the excitations on one of the chain sublattices are suppressed in the nearly adiabatic regime exponentially. Thus, we reveal a coherent mechanism to induce exponentially large density separation for different quasiparticles.