Spontaneous continuous-symmetry breaking and tower of states in a comb chain
Phys. Rev. B 113, 174405 – Published 13 May, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/mj51-1vgz
Abstract
Based on the study of a one-dimensional (1D) antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a comb lattice, in this work, we identify an example of spontaneous continuous symmetry breaking in a 1D system with short-range interactions. When a symmetry-preserving relevant perturbation is applied to the system, we find that this model can always be described by the Marshall-Lieb-Mattis (MLM) theorem. The Shen-Qiu-Tian theorem establishes a direct connection between the MLM theorem (in the case of bipartite lattices with unequal numbers of sites in the two sublattices) and the breaking of continuous symmetry. Moreover, although authors of previous studies have suggested that the presence of a tower of states (TOS) serves as an important numerical diagnostic of the tendency of a system toward spontaneous symmetry breaking, these investigations have primarily focused on two-dimensional systems. In 1D systems, however, the presence of long-range order does not automatically imply the emergence of a TOS. Here, we observe the existence of a TOS in a 1D realistic ferrimagnetic lattice system with short-range interactions.
