The quantum Ising model in a transverse field is studied where the exchange interaction is a modulating function of sites with many harmonics. The magnetically disordered phase is found to exhibit a ``mixed'' spectrum containing both critical and localized states, while the magnetically ordered phase has a pure spectrum with all states localized. Therefore, the spectral transition, although broadened, occurs simulataneously with the magnetic transition, and the magnetic disorder is accompanied by spectral disorder.
We study the interplay of disorder and Heisenberg interactions in the Kitaev model on a honeycomb lattice. The effect of disorder on the transition between Kitaev spin liquid and magnetic ordered states as well as the stability of magnetic ordering is investigated. Using Lanczos exact diagonalization we discuss the consequences of two types of disorder: (i) random-coupling disorder and (ii) singular-coupling disorder. They exhibit qualitatively similar effects in the pure Kitaev-Heisenberg model without long-range interactions. The range of spin-liquid phases is reduced and the transition to magnetic ordered phases becomes more crossoverlike. Furthermore, the long-range zigzag and stripy orderings in the clean system are replaced by their three domains with different ordering direction. Especially in the crossover range the coexistence of magnetically ordered and Kitaev spin-liquid domains is possible. With increasing the disorder strength the area of domains becomes smaller and the system goes into a spin-glass state. However, the disorder effect is different in magnetically ordered phases caused by long-range interactions. The stability of such magnetic ordering is diminished by singular-coupling disorder and, accordingly, the range of the spin-liquid regime is extended. This mechanism may be relevant to materials like $\ensuremath{\alpha}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{\mathrm{RuCl}}_{3}$ and
H3LiIr2O6 where the zigzag ground state is stabilized by weak long-range interactions. We also find that the flux gap closes at a critical disorder strength and vortices appears in the flux arrangement. Interestingly, the vortices tend to form kinds of commensurate ordering.
We investigate the effect of a unidirectional quenched random field on the anisotropic quantum spin-1/2
XY model, which magnetizes spontaneously in the absence of the random field. We adopt a mean-field approach for this analysis. In general, the models considered have Ising symmetry, and as such they exhibit ferromagnetic order in two and three dimensions in the presence of not too large disorder. Even in the special case when the model without disorder has
U(1) symmetry, a small
U(1)-symmetry-breaking random field induces ferromagnetic long-range order in two dimensions. The mean-field approach, consequently, provides a rather good qualitative and even quantitative description when applied not too close to the criticality. We show that spontaneous magnetization persists even in the presence of the random field, but the magnitude of magnetization gets suppressed due to disorder, and the system magnetizes in the directions parallel and transverse to the random field. Our results are obtained via analytical calculations within a perturbative framework and by numerical simulations. Interestingly, we show that it is possible to enhance a component of magnetization in the presence of the disorder field provided that we apply an additional constant field in the
XY plane. Moreover, we derive generalized expressions for the critical temperature and the scalings of the magnetization near the critical point for the
XY spin system with arbitrary fixed quantum spin angular momentum.