Gross-Neveu-Wilson model and correlated symmetry-protected topological phases

Understand

We show that a Wilson-type discretization of the Gross-Neveu model, a fermionic N-flavor quantum field theory displaying asymptotic freedom and chiral symmetry breaking, can serve as a playground to explore correlated symmetry-protected phases of matter using techniques borrowed from high-energy physics.

• A large- N study, both in the Hamiltonian and Euclidean formalisms, yields a phase diagram with trivial, topological, and symmetry-broken phases separated by critical lines that meet at a tri-critical point.
• We benchmark these predictions using tools from condensed matter and quantum information science, which show that the large-N method captures the essence of the phase diagram even at N = 1.
• Moreover, we describe a cold-atom scheme for the quantum simulation of this lattice model, which would allow to explore the single-flavor phase diagram.