Activated scaling in disorder-rounded first-order quantum phase transitions
Activated scaling in disorder-rounded first-order quantum phase transitions
First-order phase transitions, classical or quantum, subject to randomness coupled to energylike variables (bond randomness) can be rounded, resulting in continuous transitions (emergent criticality). We study perhaps the simplest such model, the quantum three-color Ashkin-Teller model, and show that the quantum critical point in $(1+1)$ dimension is an unusual one, …