Pivoting through the chiral-clock family

The Onsager algebra, invented to solve the two-dimensional Ising model, can be used to construct conserved charges for a family of integrable N-state chiral clock models. We show how it naturally gives rise to a "pivot" procedure for this family of chiral Hamiltonians. These Hamiltonians have an anti-unitary CPT symmetry that when combined with the usual ZN clock symmetry gives a non-abelian dihedral symmetry group D₂₍. We show that this symmetry gives rise to symmetry-protected topological (SPT) order in this family for all even N, and representation-SPT (RSPT) physics for all odd N. The simplest such example is a next-nearest-neighbour chain generalising the spin-1/2 cluster model, an SPT phase of matter. We derive a matrix-product state representation of its fixed-point ground state along with the ensuing entanglement spectrum and symmetry fractionalisation. We analyse a rich phase diagram combining this model with the Onsager-integrable chiral Potts chain, and find trivial, symmetry-breaking and (R) SPT orders, as well as extended gapless regions. For odd N, the phase transitions are "unnecessarily" critical from the SPT point of view.