Disorder lines, modulation, and partition function zeros in free fermion models

Abstract

The modulation is analyzed from the analytical properties of zeros of free fermionic partition function on the complex plane of wave numbers. It is shown how these properties are related to the oscillations of correlation functions. This approach can be used for analysis of phase transitions with local or nonlocal order parameters, as well as for the disorder lines. We find an infinite cascade of disorder lines at finite temperature in the quantum $XY$ chain (equivalent to free fermions). The well-known ground state factorization on the disorder line, and consequently, disentanglement, is shown to follow directly from analytical properties of this model on the complex plane. From the quantum-classical correspondence the results for the chain are used to detect the disorder lines in several frustrated 2D Ising models. The present formalism can be applied to other fermionic models in two and three spatial dimensions. In particular, we find the temperature-dependent Fermi wave vector of oscillations in the degenerate gas of 3D fermions, which naturally leads in the limit $T \to 0$ to the definition of the Fermi energy as the surface of quantum criticality. The modulation is a very common phenomenon, and it occurs in a large variety of models. The important point is that all these modulation transitions can be related to the complex zeros of partition functions, as done in the present study.