Boundary-dependent topological degeneracy in an Ising chain
Abstract
The influence of boundary conditions on bulk properties is generally expected to vanish in the thermodynamic limit. Here we show that this expectation can fail in an open transverse field Ising chain with modified boundary fields. By removing only the transverse fields acting on the two edge spins while leaving the bulk Hamiltonian unchanged, we uncover a boundary-induced switching of the topological spectral degeneracy. In contrast to the conventional open chain, where the topological degeneracy occurs in the ferromagnetic phase (| g| <1), the modified boundary condition shifts it to the paramagnetic phase (| g| >1). We demonstrate that the underlying mechanism originates from two exact local conserved quantities associated with the edge spins, which partition the Hilbert space into invariant sectors. Based on this structure, we establish an exact description in terms of domain-wall excitations, under which the Hamiltonian decomposes into two independent Kitaev chains. Complementarily, the Majorana representation reveals that the spectral switching originates from different unit-cell conventions and boundary terminations of the corresponding effective SSH lattice, leading to distinct boundary zero-mode structures without altering the bulk Hamiltonian. Furthermore, we show that the boundary-induced topological degeneracy remains observable at finite temperatures through non-Hermitian quench dynamics, providing a dynamical manifestation of the bulk-boundary correspondence. These results demonstrate that boundary engineering, through the introduction of local conserved boundary degrees of freedom, provides an effective route for controlling topological degeneracy in quantum spin chains without modifying bulk interactions.
Related
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- Phase transitions through excited-state level crossings and topological indicators: the case of the XXZ chain with staggered Ising interaction
- Topological Boundary States and the Edge Chain in Semi-Infinite Two-Dimensional Insulators
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- Topological Devil's staircase in a constrained kagome Ising antiferromagnet
BibTeX
@misc{ma2026boundarydependent,
title = {{Boundary-dependent topological degeneracy in an Ising chain}},
author = {E. S. Ma and Z. Song},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.09510},
eprint = {2605.09510},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.09510},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Boundary-dependent topological degeneracy in an Ising chain
AU - E. S. Ma
AU - Z. Song
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.09510
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.09510
AB - The influence of boundary conditions on bulk properties is generally expected to vanish in the thermodynamic limit. Here we show that this expectation can fail in an open transverse field Ising chain with modified boundary fields. By removing only the transverse fields acting on the two edge spins while leaving the bulk Hamiltonian unchanged, we uncover a boundary-induced switching of the topological spectral degeneracy. In contrast to the conventional open chain, where the topological degeneracy occurs in the ferromagnetic phase (| g| <1), the modified boundary condition shifts it to the paramagnetic phase (| g| >1). We demonstrate that the underlying mechanism originates from two exact local conserved quantities associated with the edge spins, which partition the Hilbert space into invariant sectors. Based on this structure, we establish an exact description in terms of domain-wall excitations, under which the Hamiltonian decomposes into two independent Kitaev chains. Complementarily, the Majorana representation reveals that the spectral switching originates from different unit-cell conventions and boundary terminations of the corresponding effective SSH lattice, leading to distinct boundary zero-mode structures without altering the bulk Hamiltonian. Furthermore, we show that the boundary-induced topological degeneracy remains observable at finite temperatures through non-Hermitian quench dynamics, providing a dynamical manifestation of the bulk-boundary correspondence. These results demonstrate that boundary engineering, through the introduction of local conserved boundary degrees of freedom, provides an effective route for controlling topological degeneracy in quantum spin chains without modifying bulk interactions.
ER -