Fragility of string orders

One-dimensional gapped systems are often characterized by a “hidden” nonlocal order parameter, the so-called string order. Due to the gap, thermodynamic properties are robust against a weak higher-dimensional coupling between such chains or ladders. On the contrary, we find that the string order is not stable and decays for arbitrary weak interchain or interladder coupling. We investigate the vanishing of the order for three different systems: spin-1 Haldane chains, band insulators, and the transverse-field Ising model. Using perturbation theory and bosonization, we show that the fragility of the string order arises from nonlocal commutation relations between the nonlocal order parameter and the perturbation.