Abstract
A unified theory of our Universe has long been one of the ultimate goals of physics. To achieve this unity, it is important to investigate how seemingly different mathematical models of physical systems can actually be equivalent, or dual. For physicists who study condensed matter, one possible duality that has attracted considerable interest involves physics beyond the standard picture for transitions between states of matter. In this talk, I will present such a case of unconventional phase transitions and their duality relations. The first system involves an interaction-driven topological phase transition, and the second one describes a transition between states of a spin system that realizes deconfined quantum criticality. To demonstrate their duality relations, we examined versions of the two models that can be solved using large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations.
Reference: Phys. Rev. X 7, 031052 (2017)
Anyone interested is welcome to attend.