- Accepted Paper
Giant number-parity effect and scalable spin squeezing in Luttinger liquids
Phys. Rev. B - Accepted 26 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/s76k-wzbt
Phys. Rev. B - Accepted 26 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/s76k-wzbt
Finite-size quantum spin systems can be magnetized by the application of a symmetry-breaking field, but in general their symmetry is expected to be restored once the field is turned off adiabatically. Recently (F. Caleca et al., arXiv:2412.15493) we have shown that systems of half-integer spins with an odd number of sites and a parity-preserving Hamiltonian can retain a finite magnetization, hence exhibiting spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) at finite size. Here we generalize this phenomenon to spin chains whose low-energy physics (in zero field) realizes a Luttinger-liquid phase. We observe that odd-sized chains can exhibit a phenomenon of finite-size quasi-SSB, in which a net sub-extensive magnetization, is retained, where is the number of sites and the Luttinger exponent. Interestingly, the states prepared by turning off the symmetry-breaking field quasi-adiabatically display scalable spin squeezing – namely stronger the bigger the system – regardless of the parity of . The scaling of the squeezing parameter is dictated again by the Luttinger exponent, . This result shows that scalable quantum correlations with metrological significance, associated typically with high-dimensional systems, can be found as well in gapless one-dimensional ones; and they are a direct consequence of the critical nature of Luttinger liquids.
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