Emergent SU(N) symmetry in disordered SO(N) spin chains

Abstract

Strongly disordered spin chains invariant under the SO(N) group are shown to display random-singlet phases with emergent SU(N) symmetry without fine tuning. The phases with emergent SU(N) symmetry are of two kinds: one has a ground state formed of randomly distributed singlets of strongly bound pairs of SO(N) spins (a `mesonic' phase), while the other has a ground state composed of singlets made out of strongly bound integer multiples of N SO(N) spins (a `baryonic' phase). The established mechanism is general and we put forward the cases of $\mathrm{N}=2,3,4$ and $6$ as prime candidates for experimental realizations in material compounds and cold-atoms systems. We display universal temperature scaling and critical exponents for susceptibilities distinguishing these phases and characterizing the enlarging of the microscopic symmetries at low energies.

5 pages, 2 figures, Contribution to the Topical Issue "Recent Advances in the Theory of Disordered Systems", edited by Ferenc Iglói and Heiko Rieger

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Quantum and Thermal Phase Transitions of the Triangular SU(3) Heisenberg Model under Magnetic Fields
• Adaptive Density-Matrix Renormalization-Group study of the disordered antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain
• Random free-fermion quantum spin chain with multi-spin interactions
• Signatures of infinite randomness in transport properties of disordered spin chains