Fidelity approach to quantum phase transitions: finite size scaling for quantum Ising model in a transverse field

Abstract

We analyze the scaling parameter, extracted from the fidelity for two different ground states, for the one-dimensional quantum Ising model in a transverse field near the critical point. It is found that, in the thermodynamic limit, the scaling parameter is singular, and the derivative of its logarithmic function with respect to the transverse field strength is logarithmically divergent at the critical point. The scaling behavior is confirmed numerically by performing a finite size scaling analysis for systems of different sizes, consistent with the conformal invariance at the critical point. This allows us to extract the correlation length critical exponent, which turns out to be universal in the sense that the correlation length critical exponent does not depend on either the anisotropic parameter or the transverse field strength.