Scaling behavior in a multicritical one-dimensional topological insulator

Abstract

A class of Aubry-Andr\'e-Harper models of spin-orbit coupled electrons exhibits a topological phase diagram where two regions belonging to the same phase are split up by a multicritical point. The critical lines which meet at this point each defines a topological quantum phase transition with a second-order nonanalyticity of the ground-state energy, accompanied by a linear closing of the spectral gap with respect to the control parameter; except at the multicritical point which supports fourth-order transitions with parabolic gap-closing. Here both types of criticality are characterized through a scaling analysis of the curvature function defined from the topological invariant of the model. We extract the critical exponents of the diverging curvature function at the non-high symmetry points in the Brillouin zone where the gap closes, and also apply a renormalization group approach to the flattening curvature function at high symmetry points. We also derive a basis-independent correlation function between Wannier states to characterize the transition. Intriguingly, we find that the critical exponents and scaling law defined with respect to the spectral gap remain the same regardless of the order of the transition.