English

Spiral versus modulated collinear phases in the quantum ANNNH model

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2016-12-26 v1

Abstract

Motivated by the discovery of spiral and modulated collinear phases in several magnetic materials, we investigate the magnetic properties of Heisenberg spin S=1/2 antiferromagnets in 2 and 3 dimensions, with frustration arising from 2nd-neighbor couplings in one axial direction (the ANNNH model). Our results clearly demonstrate the presence of an incommensurate spiral phase at T=0 in 2 dimensions, extending to finite temperatures in 3 dimensions. The crossover between N\'eel and spiral order occurs at a value of the frustration parameter considerably above the classical value 0.25, a sign of substantial quantum fluctuations. We also investigate a possible modulated collinear phase with a wavelength of 4 lattice spacings, and find that it has substantially higher energy and hence is not realized in the model.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.09595,
  title  = {Spiral versus modulated collinear phases in the quantum ANNNH model},
  author = {Jaan Oitmaa and Rajiv R. P. Singh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.09595},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

7 pages, 6 figures