We study the quantum phase diagram of the Heisenberg planar antiferromagnet with a subset of four-spin ring exchange interactions, using the recently proposed hierarchical mean-field approach. By identifying relevant degrees of freedom, we are able to use a single variational ansatz to map the entire phase diagram of the model and uncover the nature of its various phases. It is shown that there exists a transition between a Néel state and a quantum paramagnetic phase, characterized by broken translational invariance. The non-magnetic phase preserves the lattice rotational symmetry, and has a correlated plaquette nature. Our results also suggest that this phase transition can be properly described within the Landau paradigm.
We study the ground-state properties of the two-dimensional spin-1/2 ${J}_{1}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{2}$ Heisenberg model on a square lattice, within diagrammatic approximations using an auxiliary-fermion formulation with exact projection. In a first approximation, we assume a phenomenological width of the pseudofermion spectral function to calculate the magnetization, susceptibilities, and the spin-correlation length within random-phase approximation, demonstrating the appearance of a paramagnetic phase between the N\'eel-ordered and Collinear-ordered phases, at sufficiently large pseudofermion damping. Second we use a functional renormalization-group formulation. We find that the conventional truncation scheme omitting three-particle and higher-order vertices is not sufficient. We therefore include self-energy renormalizations in the single-scale propagator as recently proposed by Katanin, to preserve Ward identities in a better way. We find N\'eel order at $g={J}_{2}/{J}_{1}\ensuremath{\lesssim}{g}_{\text{c}1}\ensuremath{\approx}0.4\dots{}0.45$ and Collinear order at $g\ensuremath{\gtrsim}{g}_{\text{c}2}\ensuremath{\approx}0.66\dots{}0.68$, which is in good agreement with results obtained by numerical studies. In the intervening quantum paramagnetic phase, we find enhanced columnar dimer and plaquette fluctuations of equal strength.
Using the coupled-cluster method for high orders of approximation and Lanczos exact diagonalization we study the ground-state phase diagram of a quantum spin-
21 J1-
J2 model on the square lattice with plaquette structure. We consider antiferromagnetic (
J1>0) as well as ferromagnetic (
J1<0) nearest-neighbor interactions together with frustrating antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor interaction
J2>0. The strength of interplaquette interaction $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ varies between $\ensuremath{\lambda}=1$ (which corresponds to the uniform
J1-
J2 model) and $\ensuremath{\lambda}=0$ (which corresponds to isolated frustrated 4-spin plaquettes). While on the classical level ($s\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$) both versions of models (i.e., with ferro- and antiferromagnetic
J1) exhibit the same ground-state behavior, the ground-state phase diagram differs basically for the quantum case
s=1/2. For the antiferromagnetic case (
J1>0) N\'eel antiferromagnetic long-range order at small
J2/J1 and $\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}0.47$ as well as collinear striped antiferromagnetic long-range order at large
J2/J1 and $\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}0.30$ appear which correspond to their classical counterparts. Both semiclassical magnetic phases are separated by a nonmagnetic quantum paramagnetic phase. The parameter region, where this nonmagnetic phase exists, increases with decreasing $\ensuremath{\lambda}$. For the ferromagnetic case (
J1<0) we have the trivial ferromagnetic ground state at small
J2/∣J1∣. By increasing
J2 this classical phase gives way for a semiclassical plaquette phase, where the plaquette block spins of length
s=2 are antiferromagnetically long-range ordered. Further increasing of
J2 then yields collinear striped antiferromagnetic long-range order for $\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}0.38$, but a nonmagnetic quantum paramagnetic phase $\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\lesssim}0.38$.
We study the ground state properties of the two-dimensional spin-1/2
J_1-J_2-Heisenberg model on a square lattice, within diagrammatic
approximations using an auxiliary fermion formulation with exact projection. In
a first approximation we assume a phenomenological width of the pseudofermion
spectral function to calculate the magnetization, susceptibilities and the spin
correlation length within RPA, demonstrating the appearance of a paramagnetic
phase between the Neel ordered and Collinear ordered phases, at sufficiently
large pseudo fermion damping. Secondly we use a Functional Renormalization
Group formulation. We find that the conventional truncation scheme omitting
three-particle and higher order vertices is not sufficient. We therefore
include self-energy renormalizations in the single-scale propagator as recently
proposed by Katanin, to preserve Ward identities in a better way. We find Neel
order at g = J_2/J_1 0.66 ... 0.68,
which is in good agreement with results obtained by numerical studies. In the
intervening quantum paramagnetic phase we find enhanced columnar dimer and
plaquette fluctuations of equal strength.
We analyze the phase diagram of the frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnet, the ${J}_{1}{\ensuremath{-}J}_{2}$ model, in two dimensions. Two quantum phase transitions in the model are already known: the second-order transition from the N\'eel state to the spin liquid state at ${(J}_{2}{/J}_{1}{)}_{c2}\ensuremath{\approx}0.38,$ and the first-order transition from the spin liquid state to the collinear state at ${(J}_{2}{/J}_{1}{)}_{c4}\ensuremath{\approx}0.60.$ We have found evidence for two second-order phase transitions: the transition from the spin columnar dimerized state to the state with plaquette-type modulation at ${(J}_{2}{/J}_{1}{)}_{c3}=0.50\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.02,$ and the transition from the simple N\'eel state to the N\'eel state with spin columnar dimerization at ${(J}_{2}{/J}_{1}{)}_{c1}=0.34\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.04.$ We also present an independent calculation of ${(J}_{2}{/J}_{1}{)}_{c2}\ensuremath{\approx}0.38$ using another approach.
We study the ground-state phase diagram of the quantum ${J}_{1}\ensuremath{-}{J}_{2}$ model on a square lattice by means of an entangled-plaquette variational Ansatz. In the range $0\ensuremath{\leqslant}{J}_{2}/{J}_{1}\ensuremath{\leqslant}1$, we find classical magnetic order of N\'eel and collinear type, for ${J}_{2}/{J}_{1}\ensuremath{\lesssim}0.5$ and ${J}_{2}/{J}_{1}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}0.6$, respectively. For intermediate values of
J2/J1 the ground state is a spin liquid (i.e., paramagnetic with no valence-bond crystalline order). Our estimates of the entanglement entropy show that such a spin liquid is topological.