Abstract A Heisenberg spin- s chain with alternating ferromagnetic (FM) ( − J 1 F < 0 ) and antiferromagnetic ( J 1 A > 0 ) nearest-neighbor (NN) interactions, exhibits the dimer and spin-2 s Haldane phases in the limits J 1 F / J 1 A → 0 and J 1 F / J 1 A → ∞ respectively. These two phases are understood to be topologically equivalent. Induction of the frustration through the next NN FM interaction ( − J 2 F < 0 ) produces a very rich quantum phase diagram. With frustration, the whole phase diagram is divided into a FM and a nonmagnetic (NM) phase. For s = 1/2, the full NM phase is seen to be of Haldane–dimer type, but for s > 1/2, a spiral phase comes between the FM and the Haldane–dimer phases. The study of a suitably defined string-order parameter and spin-gap at the phase boundary indicates that the Haldane–dimer and spiral phases have different topological characters. We also find that, along the J 2 F = 1 2 J 1 F line in the NM phase, an NN dimer state is the exact groundstate, provided J 1 A > J C = κ J
The frustrated ferromagnetic spin-
1∕2 Heisenberg chain is studied by means of a low-energy field theory as well as the density-matrix renormalization group and exact diagonalization methods. First, we study the ground-state phase diagram in a magnetic field and find an ``even-odd'' (EO) phase characterized by bound pairs of magnons in the region of two weakly coupled antiferromagnetic chains. A jump in the magnetization curves signals a first-order transition at the boundary of the EO phase, but otherwise the curves are smooth. Second, we discuss thermodynamic properties at zero field, where we confirm a double-peak structure in the specific heat for moderate frustrating next-nearest-neighbor interactions.
We study Heisenberg spin-1/2 and spin-1 chains with alternating ferromagnetic (
J1F) and antiferromagnetic (
J1A) nearest-neighbor interactions and ferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor interaction (
J2F). In this model frustration is induced by the non-zero
J2F and the effect of dimerization is realized by changing the strength of
J1A for a fixed value of
J1F. The model with site spin
s behaves like a Haldane spin chain with site spin 2
s in the limit of vanishing
J2F and large
J1F/J1A. We show that the exact ground state of the model can be found along a line in the parameter space. The phase diagram in the space of
J1A−J2F is determined using numerical techniques complemented by some analytical calculations. A number of quantities, including the ground state spin, energy gap, structure factor, entanglement entropy, and zero temperature magnetization, are studied to understand the complete phase diagram. An interesting and application-wise important feature of this model is that it exhibits a macroscopic magnetization jump in the presence of a magnetic field; we study this using an effective Hamiltonian.
Magnetic frustrations are the fundamental cause of many interesting phenomena in materials that have been intensely studied since the middle of the 20th century. Magnetic systems with competing interactions, ranging from insulating antiferromagnets to arrays of superconducting qubits, exhibit nontrivial quantum e ects that arise from the need to satisfy a jagged free energy landscape. The search for and characterization of quantum spin liquids, nontrivial topological phases, and quantum phase transitions is conducted through investigations of such frustrated models. Within the large umbrella of frustrated magnetism I have studied some speci c models with the purpose of answering the following questions: (1) What are the interesting phases and less-interesting phases, and how do they fall in the phase diagram relative to one another? (2) What properties do the phases have, and how can we characterize what happens when one phase transitions to another? Armed with the answers to these questions, researchers can further explore these interesting phenomena and apply them towards new materials and devices. In this thesis, I rst develop a computational methodology for studying both classical and quantum spin models using various forms of Monte Carlo simulation. I use classical Monte Carlo to study highly-frustrated models of Ising spins both at nite temperatures and in the T = 0 limit, to map the phase diagram and determine the universality class of phase transitions. Using these methods, I show that in a dissipative chain of qubits, bath-induced qubit-qubit interactions lead to collective decoherence above a critical dissipation strength. This causes the qubits to lose all stored information and become fully correlated with one another, an e ect that one would need to mitigate in order to perform quantum computation. In another study, I show that in antiferromagnetic insulators with anisotropic interactions, frustration can cause an intermediate paramagnetic phase with oblong \droplets" of correlated spins. This phenomenon is quite general and the presence of these droplets can help explain experimental signatures that occur at unexpected temperatures in such materials. In addition to the classical simulations, I develop a variational Monte Carlo (VMC) technique to search for ground states in Heisenberg-type models, speci cally for spins S = 1. The case of S = 1 is more complicated than the case for S = 1=2 due to an additional local degree of freedom, which has interesting implications for the possible states that can be realized. Using semiclassical energy minimization as well as VMC, I show that spin S = 1 diamond-lattice antiferromagnets experience higher-order spinspin interactions that destroy previously theorized liquid-like spiral spin orderings. However, the presence of these higher-order interactions can also potentially allow other phases such as quantum spin liquids and topological paramagnets. Such results can provide an avenue for explaining anomalous phenomena like low-temperature paramagnetism in future experimental materials.
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.
We report on recent results for strongly frustrated quantum J1 - J2 antiferromagnets in dimensionality d = 1, 2, 3 obtained by the coupled cluster method (CCM). We demonstrate that the CCM in high orders of approximation allows us to investigate quantum phase transitions driven by frustration and to discuss novel quantum ground states. In detail we consider the ground-state properties of (i) the Heisenberg spin-1/2 antiferromagnet on the cubic lattice in d = 1, 2, 3, and use the results for the energy, the sublattice magnetization and the spin stiffness as a benchmark test for the precision of the method; (ii) coupled frustrated spin chains (the quasi-one-dimensional J1 - J2 model) and discuss the influence of the quantum fluctuations and the interchain coupling on the incommensurate spiral state present in the classical model; (iii) the Shastry-Sutherland antiferromagnet on the square lattice; and (iv) a stacked frustrated square-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet (the quasi-two-dimensional J1 - J2 model), and discuss the influence of the interlayer coupling on the quantum paramagnetic ground-state phase that is present for the strictly two-dimensional model.