Inversion symmetry breaking and criticality in free fermionic lattices

Abstract: We describe the connection between inversion symmetry breaking and criticality in free fermionic lattice models. It is shown that for translation-invariant spinless fermions, the breaking of this symmetry in the ground state implies criticality, i.e., the existence of long-range correlations and the vanishing of the spectral gap; while for models with spin, only the asymmetry of the spin-averaged covariance matrix implies a similar conclusion. Our results are proved by introducing invariants under global translation-invariant free fermion quenches. Using this result, we identify a set of models where the generalized Hartree-Fock approximation must break down.