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

Abstract

We analyze the fidelity per lattice site for two different ground states of the one-dimensional quantum Ising model in a transverse field near the critical point. It is found that, in the thermodynamic limit, the fidelity per lattice site 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.