The teaching from entanglement: 2D SU(2) antiferromagnet to valence bond solid deconfined quantum critical points are not conformal

Abstract

The deconfined quantum critical point (DQCP) -- the enigmatic incarnation of the quantum phase transition beyond the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm of symmetries and their spontaneous breaking -- has been proposed and actively pursued for more than two decades. Various 2D quantum many-body lattice models, both in spin/boson and fermion representations have been tested with the state-of-the-art numerical techniques and field-theoretical analyses, and yet, the conclusion is still controversial. Experimental realizations of DQCP in the quantum magnet SrCu$_2$(BO$_3$)$_2$ and superconducting quantum criticality in 2D material have either shown first order transition or intermediate phase. The tension between the lattice scale details and the requirement from continuum limit, manifested in the form of the inconsistent critical scaling behavior and violations of generic conformal bootstrap bound, has not been resolved. Here we solve these decades-long controversies from the new and fundamental perspective of the quantum entanglement. We develop the incremental algorithm to compute the entanglement entropy at a fermionic DQCP with unprecedentedly accurate data and reveal the universal coefficient of the logarithmic correction therein is negative and at odds with positivity requirement of the conformal field theory. Together with results in other 2D DQCP lattice models (both in fermion and spin systems), our discoveries clearly demonstrate the 2D SU(2) antiferromagnet to valence bond solid DQCPs are not conformal fixed point and naturally explain the experimental difficulties in finding them. This marks the end of the beginning of unambiguous finding of the quantum phase transitions truely beyond the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm, since its suggestion two decades ago.