The quantum critical regime (QCR) of a two-dimensional (2D) disordered and a 2D clean dimerized spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ Heisenberg models are studied using the first principles nonperturbative quantum Monte Carlo simulations (QMC). In particular, the three well-known universal coefficients associated with QCR are investigated in detail. While in our investigation we find the obtained results are consistent with the related analytic predictions, non-negligible finite temperature ($T$) effects are observed. Such an influence from $T$ on the properties of the considered spin systems related to QCR has not been explored thoroughly before. Moreover, the most striking finding in our study is that the numerical value for one of the universal coefficients we determine is likely to be different significantly from the corresponding result(s) established in the literature. To better understand the sources for the discrepancy observed here, apart from carrying out the associated analytic calculations not considered previously, it will be desirable as well to conduct a comprehensive examination of the exotic features of QCR for other disordered and clean spin systems than those investigated in this study.
We analyze a possibility of quantum criticality (gaplessness) in dimerized antiferromagnetic two- and three-leg spin-1/2 ladders. Contrary to earlier studies of these models, we examine different dimerization patterns in the ladder. We find that ladders with the columnar dimerization order have lower zero-temperature energies and they are always gapped. For the staggered dimerization order, we find the quantum critical lines, in agreement with earlier analyses. The bond mean-field theory we apply, demonstrates its quantitative accuracy and agrees with available numerical results. We conclude t…
We discovered a first-order phase transition between dimerized-antiferromagnetic and uniform-antiferromagnetic phases in impurity-doped spin-Peierls (SP) cuprate Cu{1-x}MgxGeO3. As impurity concentration increases, linear reduction of SP transition temperature (T{SP}) and linear increase of Neel temperature (TN) are observed up to x = 0.023. At this critical concentration (xc) SP transition suddenly disappears and TN jumps discontinuously. The peak of the susceptibility at xc around TN is not so sharp as those at other concentrations, which indicates the phase separation of low and high concen…
We consider the dimerized spin-1 $XXZ$ chain with single-ion anisotropy $D$. In absence of an explicit dimerization there are three phases: a large-$D$, an antiferromagnetically ordered and a Haldane phase. This phase structure persists up to a critical dimerization, above which the Haldane phase disappears. We show that for weak dimerization the phases are separated by Gaussian and Ising quantum phase transitions. One of the Ising transitions terminates in a critical point in the universality class of the dilute Ising model. We comment on the relevance of our results to experiments on quasi-o…
Inspired by the recently theoretical development relevant to the experimental data of TlCuCl$_3$, particularly those associated with the universal scaling between the Néel temperature $T_N$ and the staggered magnetization density $M_s$, we carry a detailed investigation of 3-dimensional (3D) dimerized quantum antiferromagnets using the first principles quantum Monte Carlo calculations. The motivation behind our study is to better understand the microscopic effects on these scaling relations of $T_N$ and $M_s$, hence to shed some light on some of the observed inconsistency between the theoretic…
The numerical value of a universal quantity associated with the quantum critical regime, namely $χ_u c^2/T$, for a two-dimensional (2D) dimerized spin-1/2 antiferromagnet is calculated using the quantum Monte Carlo simulations (QMC). Here $χ_u$, $c$, and $T$ are the uniform susceptibility, the spin-wave velocity, and the temperature, respectively. By simulating large lattices at moderately low temperatures, we find $χ_u c^2/T \sim 0.32$. Our estimation of $χ_u c^2/T$ deviates from the related analytic prediction but agrees with recent numerical calculations of other 2D dimerized spin-1/2 antif…
Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of triplet excitations triggered by a magnetic field, sometimes called magnon BEC, in dimerized antiferromagnets gives rise to a long-range antiferromagnetic order in the plane perpendicular to the applied magnetic field. To explore the effects of spin-orbit coupling on magnon condensation, we study a spin model on a distorted honeycomb lattice with dimerized Heisenberg exchange ($J$ terms) and uniform off-diagonal exchange ($Γ'$ terms) interactions. Via variational Monte Carlo calculations and spin-wave theory, we find that an out-of-plane magnetic field can i…
We examine the effects of disorder on dimerized quantum antiferromagnets in a magnetic field, using the mapping to a lattice gas of hard-core bosons with finite-range interactions. Combining a strong-coupling expansion, the replica method, and a one-loop renormalization group analysis, we investigate the nature of the glass phases formed. We find that away from the tips of the Mott lobes, the transition is from a Mott insulator to a compressible Bose glass, however the compressibility at the tips is strongly suppressed. We identify this finding with the presence of a rare Mott glass phase not …
A nonperturbative analytical description of the SU(2)_1 quantum critical point in an explicitly dimerized two-leg spin-1/2 Heisenberg ladder is presented. It is shown that this criticality essentially coincides with that emerging in a weakly dimerized spin-1 chain with a small Haldane gap. The approach is based on the mapping onto an SO(3)-symmetric model of three strongly coupled quantum Ising chains. This mapping is used to establish the correspondence between all physical fields of the spin ladder and those characterizing the SU(2)_1 criticality at the infrared fixed point.
Using the first principles quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations, we investigate the previously established universal scaling between the Néel temperature $T_N$ and the staggered magnetization density $M_s$ of three-dimensional (3D) dimerized quantum antiferromagnets. Particularly, the calculations are done on both the stacked honeycomb and the cubic lattices. In addition to simulating models with two types of antiferromagnetic couplings (bonds) like those examined in earlier studies, here a tunable parameter controlling the strength of third type of bond is introduced. Interestingly, while t…
We investigate the spatially anisotropic square lattice quantum antiferromagnet. The model describes isotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg chains (exchange constant J) coupled antiferromagnetically in the transverse (J_\perp) and diagonal (J_\times), with respect to the chain, directions. Classically, the model admits two ordered ground states -- with antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic inter-chain spin correlations -- separated by a first order phase transition at J_\perp=2J_\times. We show that in the quantum model this transition splits into two, revealing an intermediate quantum-disordered columna…
We revisit the phase diagram of the frustrated s=1/2 spin ladder with antiferromagnetic rung and diagonal couplings. In particular, we reexamine the evidence for the columnar dimer phase, which has been predicted from analytic treatment of the model and has been claimed to be found in numerical calculations. By considering longer chains and by keeping more states than in previous work using the density-matrix renormalization group, we show that the numerical evidence presented previously for the existence of the dimerized phase is not unambiguous in view of the present more careful analysis. W…
We present inelastic neutron scattering and thermodynamic measurements characterizing the magnetic excitations in a disordered non-magnetic substituted spin-liquid antiferromagnet. The parent compound Ba3Mn2O8 is a dimerized, quasi-two-dimensional geometrically frustrated quantum disordered antiferromagnet. We substitute this compound with non-magnetic vanadium for the S = 1 manganese atoms, Ba3(Mn1-xVx)2O8, and find that the singlet-triplet excitations which dominate the spectrum of the parent compound persist for the full range of substitution examined, x = 0.02 to 0.3. We also observe addit…
Thermalization is investigated for the one-dimensional anisotropic antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model with dimerized nearest-neighbor interactions that break integrability. For this purpose the time evolution of local operator expectation values after an interacting quench is calculated directly with the Chebyshev polynomial expansion, and the deviation of the diagonal from the canonical thermal ensemble value is calculated for increasing system size for these operators. The spatial and spin symmetries of the Hamiltonian are taken into account to divide it into symmetry subsectors. The rate of…
We investigate the quantum phase transition in an $S = 1/2$ dimerized Heisenberg antiferromagnet in three spatial dimensions. By performing large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations and detailed finite-size scaling analyses, we obtain high-precision results for the quantum critical properties at the transition from the magnetically disordered dimer-singlet phase to the antiferromagnetically ordered Néel phase. This transition breaks O($N$) symmetry with $N = 3$ in $D = 3 + 1$ dimensions. This is the upper critical dimension, where multiplicative logarithmic corrections to the leading mean-fi…
In certain Mott-insulating dimerized antiferromagnets, triplet excitations of the paramagnetic phase can decay into the two-particle continuum. When such a magnet undergoes a quantum phase transition into a magnetically ordered state, this coupling becomes part of the critical theory provided that the lattice ordering wavevector is zero. One microscopic example is the staggered-dimer antiferromagnet on the square lattice, for which deviations from O(3) universality have been reported in numerical studies. Using both symmetry arguments and microscopic calculations, we show that a non-trivial cu…
A quantum critical point (QCP) is a singularity in the phase diagram arising due to quantum mechanical fluctuations. The exotic properties of some of the most enigmatic physical systems, including unconventional metals and superconductors, quantum magnets, and ultracold atomic condensates, have been related to the importance of the critical quantum and thermal fluctuations near such a point. However, direct and continuous control of these fluctuations has been difficult to realize, and complete thermodynamic and spectroscopic information is required to disentangle the effects of quantum and cl…
We reconsider the excitation spectra of a dimerized and frustrated antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain. This model is taken as the simpler example of compiting spontaneous and explicit dimerization relevant for Spin-Peierls compounds. The bosonized theory is a two frequency Sine-Gordon field theory. We analize the excitation spectrum by semiclassical methods. The elementary triplet excitation corresponds to an extended magnon whose radius diverge for vanishing dimerization. The internal oscilations of the magnon give rise to a series of excited state until another magnon is emited and a two mag…
We show that spin S Heisenberg spin chains with an additional three-body interaction of the form (S_{i-1}S_{i})(S_{i}S_{i+1})+h.c. possess fully dimerized ground states if the ratio of the three-body interaction to the bilinear one is equal to 1/(4S(S+1)-2). This result generalizes the Majumdar-Ghosh point of the J_1-J_2 chain, to which the present model reduces for S=1/2. For S=1, we use the density matrix renormalization group method (DMRG) to show that the transition between the Haldane and the dimerized phases is continuous with central charge c=3/2. Finally, we show that such a three-body…
The amplitude (Higgs) mode is a ubiquitous collective excitation related to spontaneous breaking of a continuous symmetry. We combine quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations with stochastic analytic continuation to investigate the dynamics of the amplitude mode in a three-dimensional dimerized quantum spin system. We characterize this mode by calculating the spin and dimer spectral functions near the quantum critical point, finding that both the energies and the intrinsic widths satisfy field-theoretical scaling predictions. While the line width of the spin response is close to that observed in …
We present a Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) study of the ground-state properties of spin-1/2 frustrated $J_1-J_3$ Heisenberg $n_l$-leg ladders (with $n_l$ up to 8). For strong frustration ($J_3/J_1\simeq 0.5$), both even- and odd-leg ladders display a finite gap to spin excitations, which we argue remains finite in the two-dimensional limit. In this regime, on odd-leg ladders the ground state is spontaneously dimerized, in agreement with the Lieb-Schultz-Mattis prediction, while on even-leg ladders the dimer correlations decay exponentially. The magnitude of the dimer order parame…
By means of thermal expansion and specific heat measurements on the high-pressure phase of (VO)$_2$P$_2$O$_7$, the effects of two energy scales of the weakly dimerized antiferromagnetic $S$ = 1/2 Heisenberg chain are explored. The low energy scale, given by the spin gap $Δ$, is found to manifest itself in a pronounced thermal expansion anomaly. A quantitative analysis, employing T-DMRG calculations, shows that this feature originates from changes in the magnetic entropy with respect to $Δ$, $\partial S^{m}/ \partial Δ$. This term, inaccessible by specific heat, is visible only in the weak-dime…
The magnetization plateaux in two dimensionally coupled S=1/2 dimerized zigzag Heisenberg chains are investigated by means of the bond operator mean field approximation. In the absence of the interchain coupling, this model is known to have a plateau at half of the saturation magnetization accompanied by the spontanuous translational symmetry breakdown. The parameter regime in which the plateau appears is reproduced well within the present approximation. In the presence of the interchain coupling, this plateau is shown to be suppressed. This result is also supported by the numerical diagonaliz…
We discuss the ground state of the spin-orbital model for spin-one ions with partially filled $t_{2g}$ levels on a honeycomb lattice. We find that the orbital degrees of freedom induce a spontaneous dimerization of spins and drive them into nonmagnetic manifold spanned by hard-core dimer (spin-singlet) coverings of the lattice. The cooperative ``dimer Jahn-Teller'' effect is introduced through a magnetoelastic coupling and is shown to lift the orientational degeneracy of dimers leading to a peculiar valence bond crystal pattern. The present theory provides a theoretical explanation of nonmagne…
The S=1/2 and S=1 two-dimensional quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnets on the anisotropic dimerized square lattice are investigated by the quantum Monte Carlo method. By finite-size-scaling analyses on the correlation lengths, the ground-state phase diagram parametrized by strengths of the dimerization and of the spatial anisotropy is determined much more accurately than the previous works. It is confirmed that the quantum critical phenomena on the phase boundaries belong to the same universality class as that of the classical three-dimensional Heisenberg model. Furthermore, for S=1, we show th…
In the present paper, we proposed a simple spin-1/2 model which provides a exactly solvable example to study the Ising criticality with central charge c=1/2. By mapping it onto the real Majorana fermions, the Ising critical behavior is explored explicitly, although its bosonized form is not the double frequency sine-Gordon model.
The multiple reentrant quantum phase transitions in the $S=1/2$ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chains with random bond alternation in the magnetic field are investigated by the density matrix renormalization group method combined with the interchain mean field approximation. It is assumed that the odd-th bond is antiferromagnetic with strength $J$ and even-th bond can take the values ${\JS}$ and ${\JW}$ $ ({\JS} > J > {\JW} > 0)$ randomly with probability $p$ and $1-p$, respectively. The pure version ($p=0$ and $p=1$) of this model has a spin gap but exhibits a field induced antiferromagnetism i…
The search for topological insulators has been actively promoted in the field of condensed matter physics for further development in energy-efficient information transmission and processing. In this context, recent studies have revealed that not only electrons but also bosonic particles such as magnons can construct edge states carrying nontrivial topological invariants. Here we demonstrate topological triplon bands in the spin-1/2 two-dimensional dimerized quantum antiferromagnet Ba$_2$CuSi$_2$O$_6$Cl$_2$, which is closely related to a pseudo-one-dimensional variant of the Su-Schrieffer-Heege…
We have performed detailed magnetic susceptibility measurements as well as synchrotron x-ray diffraction studies to determine the temperature vs concentration ($T$ - $x$) phase diagram of Cu${}_{1-x}$Mg${}_x$GeO${}_3$. We observe clear double peaks in the magnetic susceptibility implying two antiferromagnetic (AF) transition temperatures in samples with Mg concentrations in the range 0.0237 $\le x \le$ 0.0271. We also observe a drastic change in the inverse correlation length in this concentration range by x-ray diffraction. The drastic change of the AF transition temperature as well as the di…
The effect of dimerization on the random antiferomagnetic Heisenberg chain with spin 1/2 is studied by the density matrix renormalization group method. The ground state energy, the energy gap distribution and the string order parameter are calculated. Using the finite size scaling analysis, the dimerization dependence of the these quantities are obtained. The ground state energy gain due to dimerization behaves as $u^a$ with $a > 2$ where $u$ denotes the degree of dimerization, suggesting the absence of spin-Peierls instability. It is explicitly shown that the string long range order survives …
High intensity pulsed neutron scattering reveals a new set of magnetic excitations in the pinwheel valence bond solid state of the distorted kagome lattice antiferromagnet Rb$_2$Cu$_3$SnF$_{12}$. The polarization of the dominant dispersive modes (2 meV $<\hbarω< $7 meV) is determined and found consistent with a dimer series expansion with strong Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions ($D/J=0.18$). A weakly dispersive mode near 5 meV and shifted "ghosts" of the main modes are attributed to the enlarged unit cell below a $T=215$ K structural transition. Continuum scattering between 8 meV and 10 meV …
We calculate the excitation spectrum and spectral weights of the alternating antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic spin-half Heisenberg chain with exchange couplings $J$ and $-|λ|J$ as a power series in $λ$. For small $|λ|$, the gapped one-particle spectrum has a maximum at $k=0$ and there is a rich structure of bound (and anti-bound) states below (and above) the 2-particle continuum. As $|λ|$ is increased past unity the spectrum crosses over to the Haldane regime, where the peak shifts away from $k=0$, the one particle states merge with the bottom of the continuum near $k=0$, and the spectral weigh…
In this work, we investigate the evolution and settling of magnon condensation in the spin-1/2 dimer system Sr$_{3}$Cr$_{2}$O$_{8}$ using a combination of magnetostriction in pulsed fields and inelastic neutron scattering in a continuous magnetic field. The magnetic structure in the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) phase was probed by neutron diffraction in pulsed magnetic fields up to 39~T. The magnetic structure in this phase was confirmed to be an XY-antiferromagnetic structure validated by irreducible representational analysis. The magnetic phase diagram as a function of an applied magneti…
Motivated by experiments on non-magnetic triangular-lattice Mott insulators, we study one candidate paramagnetic phase, the columnar dimer (or valence-bond) phase. We apply variants of the bond-operator theory to a dimerized and spatially anisotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg model and determine its zero-temperature phase diagram and the spectrum of elementary triplet excitations (triplons). Depending on model parameters, we find that the minimum of the triplon energy is located at either a commensurate or an incommensurate wavevector. Condensation of triplons at this commensurate-incommensurate tra…
We study the occurrence of ground-state factorization in dimerized $XY$ spin chains in a transverse field. Together with the usual ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic regimes, a third case emerges, with no analogous in translationally-invariant systems, consisting of an antiferromagnetic Neél-type ground state where pairs of spins represent the unitary cell. Then, we calculate the exact solution of the model and show that the factorizing field represent an accidental degeneracy point of the Hamiltonian. Finally, we extend the study of the existence of ground-state factorization to a more gener…
The effects of spin-1 impurities introduced in dimerized antiferromagnetic spin chains are studied using Lanczos diagonalization and quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Firstly, the magnitude of the interaction between a Ni-ion replacing a Cu-ion is derived for the case study system Cu-O-Cu. Then, it is shown that the introduction of S=1 impurities leads to the suppression of the original spin gap of the dimerized system and to the enhancement of the antiferromagnetic correlations close to the impurity. These features are interpreted in terms of a valence bond picture of the ground state of both …
The dynamics of a single hole in quantum antiferromagnets is influenced by magnetic fluctuations. In the present work we consider two situations. The first one corresponds to a single hole in the two leg t-J spin ladder. In this case the wave function renormalization is relatively small and the quasiparticle residue of the S=1/2 state remains close to unity. However at large t/J there are higher spin (S=3/2,5/2,..) bound states of the hole with the magnetic excitations, and therefore there is a crossover from quasiparticles with S=1/2 to quasiparticles with higher spin. The second situation co…
A dimerized quantum Heisenberg or XY antiferromagnetic chain has a gap in the spectrum. We show that a weak incommensurate modulation around a dimerized chain produces a zero temperature quantum critical point. As the incommensuration wavelength is varied, there is a transition to a modulated gapless state. The critical behaviour is in the universality class of the classical commensurate-incommensurate (Pokrovsky-Talapov) transition. An analogous metal-insulator transition can also take place for an incommensurate chain.
We calculate the bipartite von Neumann and second Rényi entanglement entropies of the ground states of spin-1/2 dimerized Heisenberg antiferromagnets on a square lattice. Two distinct dimerization patterns are considered: columnar and staggered. In both cases, we concentrate on the valence bond solid (VBS) phase and describe such a phase with the bond-operator representation. Within this formalism, the original spin Hamiltonian is mapped into an effective interacting boson model for the triplet excitations. We study the effective Hamiltonian at the harmonic approximation and determine the spec…
Dimerized quantum spin systems may appear under several circumstances, e.g\ by a modulation of the antiferromagnetic exchange coupling in space, or in frustrated quantum antiferromagnets. In general, such systems display a quantum phase transition to a Néel state as a function of a suitable coupling constant. We present here two path-integral formulations appropriate for spin $S=1/2$ dimerized systems. The first one deals with a description of the dimers degrees of freedom in an SO(4) manifold, while the second one provides a path-integral for the bond-operators introduced by Sachdev and Bhatt…
The Néel temperature, staggered magnetization density, as well as the spinwave velocity of a three-dimensional (3D) quantum Heisenberg model with antiferromagnetic disorder (randomness) are calculated using first principles non-perturbative quantum Monte Carlo simulations. In particular, we examine the validity of universal scaling relations that are related to these three studied physical quantities. These relations are relevant to experimental data and are firmly established for clean (regular) 3D dimerized spin-1/2 Heisenberg models. Remarkably, our numerical results show that the considere…
Magnetic bound states are a general phenomenon in low dimensional antiferromagnets with gapped singlet states. Using Raman scattering on three compounds as dedicated examples we show how exchange topology, dimensionality, defects and thermal fluctuations influence the properties and the spectral weight of these states.
The thermal and ground state properties of a class of three-dimensional (3D) random-exchange spin-1/2 antiferromagnets are studied using first principles quantum Monte Carlo method. Our motivation is to examine whether the newly discovered universal properties, which connect the Néel temperature and the staggered magnetization density, for the clean 3D quantum dimerized Heisenberg models remain valid for the random-exchange models considered here. Remarkably, similar to the clean systems, our Monte Carlo results indicate that these universal relations also emerge for the considered models with…
The phase diagram of the spin-1 chain with bilinear-biquadratic and next-nearest neighbor inter- actions, recently investigated by Pixley, Shashi and Nevidomskyy [Phys. Rev. B 90, 214426 (2014)], has been revisited in the light of results we have recently obtained on a similar model. Combining extensive Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) simulations with conformal-field theory arguments, we confirm the presence of the three phases identified by Pixley et al, a Haldane phase, a next-nearest neighbor (NNN) Haldane phase, and a dimerized phase, but we come to significantly different conc…
We study theoretically the destruction of spin nematic order due to quantum fluctuations in quasi-one dimensional spin-1 magnets. If the nematic ordering is disordered by condensing disclinations then quantum Berry phase effects induce dimerization in the resulting paramagnet. We develop a theory for a Landau-forbidden second order transition between the spin nematic and dimerized states found in recent numerical calculations. Numerical tests of the theory are suggested.
The Mott insulator κ-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu[N(CN)2]Cl consists of molecular dimers arranged on an anisotropic triangular lattice and develops a canted antiferromagnetic ground state. It has recently been suggested that this system features purely electronic ferroelectricity which requires an electric dipole moment. Optical spectroscopy clearly rules out charge imbalance in this system, which excludes the existence of quantum electric dipoles on the dimers and subsequently a dipolar spin coupling. We suggest that the prominent in-plane dielectric response in κ-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu[N(CN)2]Cl is due to short-ran…
We derive an effective Hamiltonian for the ionic Hubbard model at half filling, extended to include nearest-neighbor repulsion. Using a spin-particle transformation, the effective model is mapped onto simple spin-1 models in two particular cases. Using another spin-particle transformation, a slightly modified model is mapped into an SU(3) antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model whose exact ground state is known to be spontaneously dimerized. From the effective models several properties of the dimerized phase are discussed, like ferroelectricity and fractional charge excitations. Using bosonization …
We show that despite the absence of a Hopf term and zero Berry phase terms, the N`eel ordered phase of 2+1 D quantum antiferromagnets have spin 1/2 excitations, i.e. spinons. The spinons are skyrmion excitations of a topological nature. Since skyrmion gap is proportional to the spin stiffness, quantum criticality corresponds to skyrmion gap collapse. We speculate that skyrmions are relevant at criticality and are, perhaps, related to recent suggestions of critical fractionalization.
We revisit an antiferromagnetic quantum phase transition with $\bm{Q} = 2 \bm{k}_{F}$, where $\bm{Q}$ is an ordering wave vector and $\bm{k}_{F}$ is a Fermi momentum. Reformulating the Hertz-Moriya-Millis theory within the strong coupling approach to diagonalize the spin-fermion coupling term and performing the scaling analysis for an effective field theory with quantum corrections in the Eliashberg approximation, we propose a novel interacting fixed point for this antiferromagnetic quantum phase transition, where antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations become locally critical to interact with ren…
We investigate the zero-temperature phase diagram of the nearest-neighbor kagome antiferromagnet in the presence of Dzyaloshinksii-Moriya interaction. We develop a theory for the transition between Z2 spin liquids with bosonic spinons and a phase with antiferromagnetic long-range order. Connections to recent numerical studies and experiments are discussed.
Hertz-Moriya-Millis theory with dynamical critical exponent $z = 2$ has been proposed to describe antiferromagnetic quantum criticality in itinerant electron systems. In this study we show that the dynamical critical exponent changes from $z = 2$ to $z = 3$ at low temperatures, which results from effective long-range interactions between spin fluctuations, generated by Fermi-surface fluctuations beyond the Eliashberg framework. We claim that the underlying physics for the $z = 3$ antiferromagnetic quantum criticality is the emergence of fermionized skyrmion excitations at low energies, which f…
It is widely believed that magnetic excitations become increasingly incoherent as temperature is raised due to random collisions which limit their lifetime. This picture is based on spin-wave calculations for gapless magnets in 2 and 3 dimensions and is observed experimentally as a symmetric Lorentzian broadening in energy. Here, we investigate a three-dimensional dimer antiferromagnet and find unexpectedly that the broadening is asymmetric - indicating that far from thermal decoherence, the excitations behave collectively like a strongly correlated gas. This result suggests that a temperature…
Using the density-matrix renormalization group, we determine the phase diagram of the spin 1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a honeycomb lattice with a nearest neighbor interaction J1 and a frustrating, next-neighbor exchange J2. As frustration increases, the ground state exhibits Neel, plaquette and dimer orders, with critical points at J2/J1 = 0.22 and 0.35. We observe that both the spin gap and the corresponding order parameters vanish continuously at both the critical points, indicating the presence of deconfined quantum criticality.
Because the three-leg ladder behaves like a renormalized single Heisenberg chain we argue that a spin-Peierls instability must occur in this system when it is coupled to three-dimensional phonons. Using the bond-mean-field theory, we show that this is indeed the case. The dimerized state below the spin-Peierls transition temperature forms into the columnar dimerized phase not the staggered one. This contrasts with the argument based on antiferromagnetism. A physical argument based rather on spin bonding into singlets explains why the columnar configuration is favored. No quantum criticality (g…
Dimerized antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 ladders are known to exhibit a quantum critical phase transition in the ground state, the existence or absence of which is dependent on the dimerization pattern of the ladder. The gapped phases cannot be distinguished by the conventional Landau long-range order parameter. However, they possess a non-local (hidden) string order parameter, which is non-zero in one phase and vanishes in the other. We use an exact diagonalization technique to calculate ground state energies, energy gaps and string order parameters of dimerized two- and three-leg Heisenberg ladd…
Neutron scattering evidence for two-dimensionally coupled spin-dimerized antiferromagnetic lattice in α-Cu2P2O7
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre（巴哈原子研究中心）；Homi Bhabha National Institute（霍米·巴巴国立研究所）；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）；PSI Center for Neutron and Muon Sciences（PSI中子与μ子科学中心）；ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory（卢瑟福·阿普尔顿实验室ISIS中子与μ子源）；Department of Physics, Royal Holloway University of London（伦敦大学皇家霍洛威学院物理系）
We study spontaneous dimerization and emergent criticality in a spin-3/2 chain with antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor $J_1$, next-nearest-neighbor $J_2$ and three-site $J_3$ interactions. In the absence of three-site interaction $J_3$, we provide evidence that the model undergoes a remarkable sequence of three phase transitions as a function of $J_2/J_1$, going successively through a critical commesurate phase, a partially dimerized gapped phase, a critical floating phase with quasi-long-range incommensurate order, to end up in a fully dimerized phase at very large $J_2/J_1$. In the field the…
