From thermal to excited-state quantum phase transition: The Dicke model

Abstract

We study the thermodynamics of the full version of the Dicke model, including all the possible values of the total angular momentum j, with bothmicrocanonical and canonical ensembles. We focus on both the excited-state quantum phase transition, appearing in the microcanonical description of the maximum angular momentum sector, j = N/2, and the thermal phase transition, which occurs when all the sectors are taken into account. We show that two different features characterize the full version of the Dicke model. If the system is in contact with a thermal bath and is described by means of the canonical ensemble, the parity symmetry becomes spontaneously broken at the critical temperature. In the microcanonical ensemble, and despite that all the logarithmic singularities which characterize the excited-state quantum phase transition are ruled out when all the j sectors are considered, there still exists a critical energy (or temperature) dividing the spectrum into two regions: one in which the parity symmetry can be broken, and another in which this symmetry is always well defined.