Level crossings induced by a longitudinal coupling in the transverse field Ising chain

We study the effect of antiferromagnetic longitudinal coupling on the one-dimensional transverse field Ising model with nearest-neighbor couplings. In the topological phase where, in the thermodynamic limit, the ground state is twofold degenerate, we show that, for a finite system of N sites, the longitudinal coupling induces N level crossings between the two lowest-lying states as a function of the field. We also provide strong arguments suggesting that these N level crossings all appear simultaneously as soon as the longitudinal coupling is switched on. This conclusion is based on perturbation theory and a mapping of the problem onto the open Kitaev chain, for which we write down the complete solution in terms of Majorana fermions.