Volume Changing Symmetries by Matrix Product Operators

Abstract

We consider spin chain models with exotic symmetries that change the length of the spin chain. It is known that the XXZ Heisenberg spin chain at the supersymmetric point $\Delta=-1/2$ possesses such a symmetry: it is given by the supersymmetry generators, which change the length of the chain by one unit. We show that volume changing symmetries exist also in other spin chain models, and that they can be constructed using a special tensor network, which is a simple generalization of a Matrix Product Operator. As examples we consider the folded XXZ model and its perturbations, and also a new hopping model that is defined on constrained Hilbert spaces. We show that the volume changing symmetries are not related to integrability: the symmetries can survive even non-integrable perturbations. We also show that the known supersymmetry generator of the XXZ chain with $\Delta=-1/2$ can also be expressed as a generalized Matrix Product Operator.