Quantum Annealed Criticality: A Scaling Description

Experimentally there exist many materials with first-order phase transitions at finite temperature that display quantum criticality. Classically, a strain-energy density coupling is known to drive first-order transitions in compressible systems, and here we generalize this Larkin-Pikin mechanism to the quantum case. We show that if the T=0 system lies above its upper critical dimension, the line of first-order transitions ends in a "quantum annealed critical point" where zero-point fluctuations restore the underlying criticality of the order parameter. The generalized Larkin-Pikin phase diagram is presented and experimental consequences are discussed.