Abstract We study the ground state properties of the anisotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on lattices built from ideal diamond units with competing ferro- and antiferromagnetic interactions. The study covers the one-dimensional diamond chain and its two- and three-dimensional generalizations. The ground-state phase diagram contains four distinct phases: ferromagnetic (F), critical (C), monomer-dimer (MD), and tetramer-dimer (TD), which converge at a quadruple point. We demonstrate the presence of macroscopic ground-state degeneracy and corresponding residual entropy, which is maximal at the quadruple point and also extends throughout the MD phase and its boundaries with TD and F phases. For the diamond chain, we derive exact degeneracies, while for higher-dimensional lattices, we map the problem onto a bond percolation model or used transfer-matrix approach, enabling the numerical computation of the ground state degeneracy.
An exactly solvable variant of a mixed spin-(1/2,1) Ising-Heisenberg diamond chain is considered. Vertical spin-1 dimers are taken as quantum ones with Heisenberg bilinear and biquadratic interactions and with single-ion anisotropy, while all interactions between spin-1 and spin-1/2 residing on the intermediate sites are taken in the Ising form. The detailed analysis of the
T=0 ground-state phase diagram is presented. The phase diagrams have been shown to be rather rich, demonstrating a large variety of ground states: a saturated one, three ferrimagnetic ones with magnetization equal to 3/5, and another four ferrimagnetic ground states with magnetization equal to 1/5. There are also two frustrated macroscopically degenerated ground states that could exist at zero magnetic filed. Solving the model exactly within a classical transfer-matrix formalism we obtain exact expressions for all thermodynamic functions of the system. The thermodynamic properties of the model have been described exactly by exact calculation of the partition function within the direct classical transfer-matrix formalism.
We present the phase diagram of the
S=1/2 Heisenberg model on the two leg ladder with cyclic four-spin exchange, determined by a combination of exact diagonalization and density-matrix renormalization group techniques. We find six different phases and regimes: the rung singlet phase, a ferromagnetic phase, two symmetry broken phases with staggered dimers and staggered scalar chiralities, and a gapped region with dominant vector chirality, or collinear spin correlations. We localize the phase transitions and investigate their nature.
We present results on the dynamics of the distorted diamond chain,
S=1∕2 dimers alternating with single spins
1∕2 and exchange couplings
J1 and
J3 in between. The dynamics in the spin fluid (SF) and tetramer-dimer (TD) phases is investigated numerically by exact diagonalization for up to 24 spins. Representative excitation spectra are presented both for zero magnetic field and in the
1∕3 plateau phase and the relevant parameters are determined across the phase diagram. The behavior across the SF-TD phase transition line is discussed for the specific heat and for excitation spectra. The relevance of the distorted diamond chain model for the
Cu3(CO3)2(OH)2 (azurite) material is discussed with particular emphasis on inelastic neutron scattering experiments; the recent suggestion of one possibly ferromagnetic coupling constant is not confirmed.
The ground-state phases of mixed diamond chains with (
S,τ(1),τ(2))=(1/2,1/2,1), where
S is the magnitude of vertex spins, and
τ(1) and
τ(2) are those of apical spins, are investigated. The two apical spins in each unit cell are coupled by an exchange coupling
λ. The vertex spins are coupled with the top and bottom apical spins by exchange couplings
1+δ and
1−δ, respectively. Although this model has an infinite number of local conservation laws for
δ=0, they are lost for finite
δ. The ground-state phase diagram is determined using the numerical exact diagonalization and DMRG method in addition to the analytical approximations in various limiting cases. The phase diagram consists of a nonmagnetic phase and several kinds of ferrimagnetic phases. We find two different ferrimagnetic phases without spontaneous translational symmetry breakdown. It is also found that the quantized ferrimagnetic phases with large spatial periodicities present for
δ=0 are easily destroyed by small
δ and replaced by a partial ferrimagnetic phase. The nonmagnetic phase is considered to be a gapless Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid phase based on the recently extended Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorem to the site-reflection invariant spin chains and numerical diagonalization results.