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Main Authors: Yu, Yue, Hwang, Myung-Joong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08391
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author Yu, Yue
Hwang, Myung-Joong
author_facet Yu, Yue
Hwang, Myung-Joong
contents The spontaneous breaking of a $Z_2$ symmetry typically gives rise to emergent excitations possessing the same symmetry with a renormalized mass. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, we present a theory in which the low-lying excitation in the broken-symmetry phase acquires a continuous symmetry, even when the underlying symmetry of the system is discrete. In the presence of anisotropic long-range interactions, the order parameter renormalizes the relative strength of the particle-conserving and particle-nonconserving interactions. When one of the two renormalized interactions vanishes, a conservation law absent in the original Hamiltonian emerges, giving rise to a continuous symmetry. A striking consequence of the emergent continuous symmetry and conservation law is that it constrains quantum correlations in the ground-state to be zero, leading to the ground-state factorization in the presence of strong interactions. Our finding is a universal feature of quantum phase transitions in fully-connected systems and in their lattice generalizations; therefore, it can be observed in a wide range of physical systems.
format Preprint
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Emergent continuous symmetry and ground-state factorization induced by long-range interactions
Yu, Yue
Hwang, Myung-Joong
Quantum Physics
The spontaneous breaking of a $Z_2$ symmetry typically gives rise to emergent excitations possessing the same symmetry with a renormalized mass. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, we present a theory in which the low-lying excitation in the broken-symmetry phase acquires a continuous symmetry, even when the underlying symmetry of the system is discrete. In the presence of anisotropic long-range interactions, the order parameter renormalizes the relative strength of the particle-conserving and particle-nonconserving interactions. When one of the two renormalized interactions vanishes, a conservation law absent in the original Hamiltonian emerges, giving rise to a continuous symmetry. A striking consequence of the emergent continuous symmetry and conservation law is that it constrains quantum correlations in the ground-state to be zero, leading to the ground-state factorization in the presence of strong interactions. Our finding is a universal feature of quantum phase transitions in fully-connected systems and in their lattice generalizations; therefore, it can be observed in a wide range of physical systems.
title Emergent continuous symmetry and ground-state factorization induced by long-range interactions
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08391