Variational study of the two‐impurity spin–boson model with a common Ohmic bath : ground‐state phase transitions

Abstract

By means of a trial wave function, the multi‐D1 ansatz, extensive variational calculations with more than 10 000 parameters are carried out to study quantum phase transitions in the ground states of a two‐impurity system embedded in a common Ohmic bath of bosons. Quantum criticality in both the impurity system and the Ohmic bosonic bath is investigated with relevant transition points and critical exponents determined accurately. With the linear grid of the Ohmic spectral density, numerical calculations herein produce a much better description of the ground states with lower energies than other calculations employing a logarithmic grid with a discretization factor far greater than unity. This offers a possible resolution to the considerable controversy on the critical coupling in the literature. Moreover, the ground‐state phase transition is inferred to be of first order in the presence of strong antiferromagnetic spin–spin coupling, at variance with that in the ferromagnetic regime or in the absence of spin–spin coupling where the transition belongs to the Kosterlitz–Thouless universality class.