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Uncomputability of phase diagrams.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Cubitt, Toby S 

Abstract

The phase diagram of a material is of central importance in describing the properties and behaviour of a condensed matter system. In this work, we prove that the task of determining the phase diagram of a many-body Hamiltonian is in general uncomputable, by explicitly constructing a continuous one-parameter family of Hamiltonians H(φ), where [Formula: see text], for which this is the case. The H(φ) are translationally-invariant, with nearest-neighbour couplings on a 2D spin lattice. As well as implying uncomputablity of phase diagrams, our result also proves that undecidability can hold for a set of positive measure of a Hamiltonian's parameter space, whereas previous results only implied undecidability on a zero measure set. This brings the spectral gap undecidability results a step closer to standard condensed matter problems, where one typically studies phase diagrams of many-body models as a function of one or more continuously varying real parameters, such as magnetic field strength or pressure.

Description

Keywords

quant-ph, quant-ph, cond-mat.other, math-ph, math.MP, 03D35, 68Q17, 81V70, 82B26

Journal Title

Nat Commun

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723
2041-1723

Volume Title

12

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
EPSRC (EP/T001062/1)