0000000001207768
AUTHOR
L. Ferro
Classical nature of ordered phases: origin of spontaneous symmetry breaking
We investigate the nature of spontaneous symmetry breaking in complex quantum systems by conjecturing that the maximally symmetry breaking quantum ground states are the most classical ones corresponding to an ordered phase. We make this argument quantitatively precise by showing that the ground states which realize the maximum breaking of the Hamiltonian symmetries are the only ones that: I) are always locally convertible, i.e. can be obtained from all other ground states by local operations and classical communication, while the reverse is never possible; II) minimize the monogamy inequality for bipartite entanglement; III) minimize quantum correlations, as measured by the quantum discord,…
Classical nature of ordered quantum phases and origin of spontaneous symmetry breaking
We analyse the nature of spontaneous symmetry breaking in complex quantum systems by investigating the long-standing conjecture that the maximally symmetry-breaking quantum ground states are the most classical ones corresponding to a globally ordered phase. We make this argument quantitatively precise by comparing different local and global indicators of classicality and quantumness, respectively in symmetry-breaking and symmetry-preserving quantum ground states. We first discuss how naively comparing local, pairwise entanglement and discord apparently leads to the opposite conclusion. Indeed, we show that in symmetry-preserving ground states the two-body entanglement captures only a modest…