In this article we study the ground-state properties of two square-lattice Heisenberg quantum spin models with competing bonds using a high-order coupled cluster treatment. The first model is a spin-half model with competing nearest-neighbour bonds with and without frustration. We discuss the influence of quantum fluctuations on the ground-state phase diagram and in particular on the nature of the zero-temperature phase transitions from phases with collinear magnetic order at small frustration to phases with noncollinear spiral order at large frustration. The second model is a highly frustrated ferrimagnet, which contains one sublattice (A) entirely populated with spin-one spins and an other sublattice (B) entirely populated with spin-half spins. Sublattice A sites are nearest-neighbours to sublattice B sites and vice versa and frustration is introduced by next-nearest-neighbour bonds. The model shows two collinear ordered phases and a noncollinear phase in which (classically) the spin-one spins are allowed to cant at an angle. Both examples show that the coupled-cluster method is able to describe the zero-temperature transitions well and provides a consistent description of collinear, noncollinear, and disordered phases, for cases in which other standard techniques (e.g. the quantum Monte Carlo technique for spin systems which are frustrated) are not applicable.
We apply a random-plaquette
J1-
J2 model on the square lattice to capture the physics of a series of spin-
1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet compounds Sr
2CuTe
1−xW
xO
6. With the input of experimentally relevant coupling strengths, our exact diagonalization (ED) study probes the ground state properties beyond previous linear spin-wave approach. An intermediate range of
x∈[0.08,0.55] is identified for a nonmagnetic phase without the long-range Néel or stripe order. The absence of both valence-bond-glass order and spin-glass non-ergodic dynamics renders its nature intriguing. Deep inside this phase around
x=0.3, we observe signatures potentially linked to randomness-induced short-range spin-liquid-like (SLL) states, including close to zero spin-freezing parameter, vanishing spin-spin correlation beyond nearest neighbors, almost uniform static spin structure factor, as well as a broad tail in the dynamical spin structure factor. The nonmagnetic phase also features multipartite entanglement in the ground state witnessed by quantum Fisher information (QFI), which exhibits universal scaling behaviors at quantum critical points.
In this work the ordering processes in classical frustrated Ising models and the ground-state behavior of frustrated quantum spin models are investigated. In the first part the phase transition from a high-temperature paramagnetic phase to a antiferromagnetic ground state is analyzed for the square-lattice Ising model with competing antiferromagnetic interactions between nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor spins. In the case of spatially isotropic interactions the phase transition to a collinear state is of special interest. Using Monte-Carlo simulations on finite lattices as well as field-theoretical methods for the continuous model it is shown that depending on the frustration three different sectors can be distinguished that show (i) Ising-universal behavior (ii) Ashkin-Teller-like non-universal behavior (varying critical exponents) and (iii) non-critical first-order behavior. For spatially anisotropic interactions the emergence of an intermediate incommensurate phase is verified by means of Monte-Carlo simulations which has been predicted by earlier mean-field calculations. The nature of this phase is studied analyzing spin-spin correlation functions and its ordering wave-vector reveals a strong temperature and size dependence. In the second part the influence of quantum fluctuations on classical antiferromagnetic ground states are investigated in anisotropic quantum spin-1/2 Heisenberg models with competing interactions. Using quantum Monte-Carlo simulations, exact diagonalization and perturbation theory the ground-state phase diagrams are calculated for a square lattice with nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor interactions and a honeycomb lattice with up to third-nearest-neighbor interactions whereby the fluctuations are chosen to be non-frustrating. For both cases the stability regions of classical magnetic states are identified and an intermediate phase is detected that shows no sign of long-range magnetic order. Further calculations also rule out valence-bond-crystal or topological order for this state, thus a quantum disordered ground state is stabilized in these models.
We develop an approach for characterizing nonlocal quantum correlations in spin systems with exactly or nearly degenerate ground states. Starting with linearly independent degenerate eigenfunctions calculated with exact diagonalization we generate a finite set of their random linear combinations with Haar measure, which guarantees that these combinations are uniformly distributed in the space spanned by the initial eigenstates. Estimating the von Neumann entropy of the random wave functions helps to reveal previously unknown features of the quantum correlations in the phases with degeneracy of the ground state. For instance, spin spiral phase of the quantum magnet with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction is characterized by the enhancement of the entanglement entropy, which can be qualitatively explained by the changes in behavior of two- and three-spin correlation functions. To establish the connection between our theoretical findings and real experiments we elaborate on the problem of estimating observables on the basis of the single-shot measurements of numerous degenerate eigenstates. By the example of solving a simple Ising model it is shown that digital quantum simulations performed with quantum computers can provide accurate description of the entanglement of the degenerate systems even in the presence of noise. We also discuss the ground-state properties of degenerate fermionic and bosonic models, which can be useful for theoretical analysis of the experiments with ultracold atoms.
We study the ground-state (GS) properties of the frustrated spin-
21 J1--
J2--
J3 Heisenberg model on the two-dimensional honeycomb lattice with ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor (${J}_{1}=\ensuremath{-}1$) exchange and frustrating antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor (
J2>0) and next-next-nearest-neighbor (
J3>0) exchanges, for the case
J3=J2. We use the coupled-cluster method implemented to high orders of approximation, complemented by the Lanczos exact diagonalization of a large finite lattice with 32 sites, in order to calculate the GS energy, magnetic order parameter, and spin-spin correlation functions. In one scenario we find a quantum phase transition point between regions characterized by ferromagnetic order and a form of antiferromagnetic (``striped'') collinear order at ${J}_{2}^{c}\ensuremath{\approx}0.1095\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.0005$, which is below the corresponding hypothetical transition point at
J2cl=71 ($\ensuremath{\approx}0.143$) for the classical version of the model, in which we momentarily ignore the intervening noncollinear spiral phase in the region
101<J2<51. Hence we see that quantum fluctuations appear to stabilize somewhat the collinear antiferromagnetic order in preference to the ferromagnetic order in this model. We compare results for the present ferromagnetic case (with ${J}_{1}=\ensuremath{-}1$) to previous results for the corresponding antiferromagnetic case (with
J1=+1). The magnetic order parameter is found to behave similarly for the ferromagnetic and the antiferromagnetic models for large values of the frustration parameter
J2. However, there are considerable differences in the behavior of the order parameters for the two models for ${J}_{2}/|{J}_{1}|\ensuremath{\lesssim}0.6$. For example, the quasiclassical collinear magnetic long-range order for the antiferromagnetic model (with
J1=+1) breaks down at ${J}_{2}^{{c}_{2}}\ensuremath{\approx}0.60$, whereas the ``equivalent'' point for the ferromagnetic model (with ${J}_{1}=\ensuremath{-}1$) occurs at ${J}_{2}^{c}\ensuremath{\approx}0.11$. Unlike in the antiferromagnetic model (with
J1=+1), where a plaquette valence-bond crystal phase intrudes between the two corresponding quasiclassical antiferromagnetic phases (with N\'eel and striped order) for
J2c1<J2<J2c2, with ${J}_{2}^{{c}_{1}}\ensuremath{\approx}0.47$, we find no clear indications at all in the ferromagnetic model for an intermediate magnetically disordered phase between the corresponding phases exhibiting ferromagnetic and striped order. Instead the evidence for the ferromagnetic model (with ${J}_{1}=\ensuremath{-}1$) points to one of two scenarios: either there is a direct first-order transition between the two magnetically ordered phases, as mentioned above; or there exists an intervening phase between them in the very narrow range $0.10\ensuremath{\lesssim}{J}_{2}\ensuremath{\lesssim}0.12$, which is probably a remnant of the spiral phase that exists in the classical counterpart of the model over the larger range
101<J2<51.
Bulk magnetism in solids is fundamentally quantum mechanical in nature. Yet in many situations, including our everyday encounters with magnetic materials, quantum effects are masked, and it often suffices to think of magnetism in terms of the interaction between classical dipole moments. Whereas this intuition generally holds for ferromagnets, even as the size of the magnetic moment is reduced to that of a single electron spin (the quantum limit), it breaks down spectacularly for antiferromagnets, particularly in low dimensions. Considerable theoretical and experimental progress has been made in understanding quantum effects in one-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets, but a complete experimental description of even simple two-dimensional antiferromagnets is lacking. Here we describe a comprehensive set of neutron scattering measurements that reveal a non-spin-wave continuum and strong quantum effects, suggesting entanglement of spins at short distances in the simplest of all two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets, the square lattice Heisenberg system.