Critical Excitation Spectrum of Quantum Chain With A Local 3-Spin Coupling

Abstract: This article reports a measurement of the low-energy excitation spectrum along the critical line for a quantum spin chain having a local interaction between three Ising spins and longitudinal and transverse magnetic fields. The measured excitation spectrum agrees with that predicted by the (D$_4$, A$_4$) conformal minimal model under a nontrivial correspondence between translations at the critical line and discrete lattice translations. Under this correspondence, the measurements confirm a prediction that the critical line of this quantum spin chain and the critical point of the 2D 3-state Potts model are in the same universality class.