Exact phase diagram and topological phase transitions of the XYZ spin chain

Abstract

Within the block spin renormalization group we are able to construct the "exact" phase diagram of the XYZ spin chain. First we identify the Ising order along $\hat x$ or $\hat y$ as attractive renormalization group fixed points of the Kitaev chain. Then in a global phase space composed of the anisotropy $λ$ of the XY interaction and the coupling $Δ$ of the $Δσ^zσ^z$ interaction we find that the above fixed points remain attractive in the two dimesional parameter space. We therefore classify the gapped phases of the XYZ spin chain as: (1) either attracted to the Ising limit of the Kitaev-chain which in turn is characterized by winding number $\pm 1$ depending whether the Ising order parameter is along $\hat x$ or $\hat y$ directions; or (2) attracted to the Mott phases of the underlying Jordan-Wigner fermions which is characterized by zero winding number. We therefore establish that the exact phase boundaries of the XYZ model in Baxter's solution indeed correspond to topological phase transitions. The topological nature of the phase transitions of the XYZ model justifies why our analytical solution of the three-site problem which is at the core of the renormalization group treatment is able to produce the exact phase diagram of Baxter's solution. We argue that the distribution of the winding numbers between the three Ising phases is a matter of choice of the coordinate system, and therefore the Mott-Ising phase is entitled to host apprpriate form of zero modes. We further observe that the renormalization group flow can be cast into a geometric progression of a properly identified parameter. We show that this new parameter is actually the size of the (Majorana) zero modes.