Metric-Space Approach for Distinguishing Quantum Phase Transitions in Spin-Imbalanced Systems

Abstract

Metric spaces are characterized by distances between pairs of elements. Systems that are physically similar are expected to present smaller distances (between their densities, wave functions, and potentials) than systems that present different physical behaviors. For this reason, metric spaces are good candidates for probing quantum phase transitions, since they could identify regimes of distinct phases. Here, we apply metric space analysis to explore the transitions between the several phases in spin-imbalanced systems. In particular, we investigate the so-called FFLO (Fulde-Ferrel-Larkin-Ovchinnikov) phase, which is an intriguing phenomenon in which superconductivity and magnetism coexist in the same material. This is expected to appear for example in attractive fermionic systems with spin-imbalanced populations, due to the internal polarization produced by the imbalance. The transition between FFLO phase (superconducting phase) and the normal phase (non-superconducting) and their boundaries have been subject of discussion in recent years. We consider the Hubbard model in the attractive regime for which density matrix renormalization group calculations allow us to obtain the exact density function of the system. We then analyze the exact density distances as a function of the polarization. We find that our distances display signatures of the distinct quantum phases in spin-imbalanced fermionic systems: with respect to a central reference polarization, systems without FFLO present a very symmetric behavior, while systems with phase transitions are asymmetric.