Edge Modes, Impurities, and Phase Transitions in One-Dimensional Quantum Matter
A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Statistical Physics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 22
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Real-world systems are finite in size and contain defects and impurities. In one-dimensional quantum systems, in particular, boundaries and impurities have significant impact, being intrinsic sites where quantum correlations localize and where the entanglement structure of the phase is most sharply expressed. They provide a natural framework for examining how information, symmetry, and topology are organized across distinct quantum regimes.
Often, such systems are gapless and conformally invariant, in which case many of these aspects can be elegantly captured by conformal field theory. For example, at conformal criticality, the entanglement entropy of an interval of length l given by S(l) = (c/3)ln(l) + sb, includes the universal boundary contribution sb describing the coupling between critical bulk fields and localized boundary degrees of freedom. In contrast, gapped systems may possess symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases with short-range entanglement and host fractionalized edge excitations that transform projectively under the protecting symmetry. These edge modes carry quantized quantum information, yielding a constant entanglement offset rather than a logarithmic boundary term. In open quantum systems or when out of equilibrium, these localized degrees of freedom encode how coherence, symmetry, and dissipation compete: unitary quenches can redistribute or delocalize them, whereas dissipation and measurement can destroy, protect, or even regenerate them.
Boundaries and impurities thus expose the information-theoretic foundations of one-dimensional quantum matter and its critical and topological transitions.
Prof. Dr. Natan Andrei
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- open system
- boundary
- impurity
- conformal
- topological
- symmetry-protected
- fractionalized modes
- quantum information
- entanglement
- quench
- dissipation
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