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.
The thermodynamics of coupled frustrated ferromagnetic chains is studied within a spin-rotation-invariant Green's-function approach. We consider an isotropic Heisenberg spin-half system with a ferromagnetic in-chain coupling
J1<0 between nearest neighbors and a frustrating antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor in-chain coupling
J2>0. We focus on the moderate strength of frustration
J2<∣J1∣/4 such that the in-chain spin-spin correlations are predominantly ferromagnetic. We consider two interchain couplings (ICs) ${J}_{\ensuremath{\perp},y}$ and ${J}_{\ensuremath{\perp},z}$, corresponding to the two axes perpendicular to the chain, where ferromagnetic as well as antiferromagnetic ICs are taken into account. We discuss the influence of frustration on the ground-state properties for antiferromagnetic ICs, where the ground state is of a quantum nature. The major part of our study is devoted to the finite-temperature properties. We calculate the critical temperature
Tc as a function of the competing exchange couplings ${J}_{2},{J}_{\ensuremath{\perp},y},{J}_{\ensuremath{\perp},z}$. We find that for fixed ICs,
Tc decreases monotonically with increasing frustration
J2, where as ${J}_{2}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}|{J}_{1}|/4$ the
Tc(J2) curve drops down rapidly. To characterize the magnetic ordering below and above
Tc, we calculate the spin-spin correlation functions $\ensuremath{\langle}{\mathbf{S}}_{0}{\mathbf{S}}_{\mathbf{R}}\ensuremath{\rangle}$, the magnetic order parameter
M, the uniform static susceptibility ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{0}$, as well as the correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}$. Moreover, we discuss the specific heat
CV and the temperature dependence of the excitation spectrum ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\mathbf{q}}$. As ${J}_{2}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}|{J}_{1}|/4$, some unusual frustration-induced features were found, such as an increase of the in-chain spin stiffness (in the case of ferromagnetic ICs) or of the in-chain spin-wave velocity (in the case of antiferromagnetic ICs) with growing temperature.
Motivated by recent work on Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin systems on various lattices made up of triangles, we examine the low-energy properties of a chain of antiferromagnetically coupled triangles of half-odd-integer spins. We derive the low-energy effective Hamiltonian to second order in the ratio of the coupling
J2 between triangles to the coupling
J1 within each triangle. The effective Hamiltonian contains four states for each triangle which are given by the products of spin-1/2 states with the states of a pseudospin 1/2. We compare the results obtained by exact diagonalization of the effective Hamiltonian with those obtained for the full Hamiltonian using exact diagonalization and the density-matrix renormalization group method. It is found that the effective Hamiltonian gives an accurate value for the ground-state energy only if the ratio
J2/J1 is less than about 0.2 and that too for the spin-1/2 case with linear topology. The chain of spin-1/2 triangles shows interesting properties like spontaneous dimerization and several singlet and triplet low-energy (possibly gapless) states which lie close to the ground state. We have also studied the spin-3/2 case and find the low-energy effective Hamiltonians (LEH's) to be less accurate there than in the spin-1/2 case. Finally, we have studied nonlinear topologies where the LEH results deviate further from the exact results.
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 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 study Heisenberg spin-1/2 and spin-1 chains with alternating ferromagnetic (J(1)(F)) and antiferromagnetic (J(1)(A)) nearest-neighbor interactions and a ferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor interaction (J(2)(F)). In this model frustration is present due to the non-zero J(2)(F). The model with site spin s behaves like a Haldane spin chain, with site spin 2s in the limit of vanishing J(2)(F) and large J(1)(F)/J(1)(A). We show that the exact ground state of the model can be found along a line in the parameter space. For fixed J(1)(F), the phase diagram in the space of J(1)(A)-J(2)(F) is determined using numerical techniques complemented by analytical calculations. A number of quantities, including the structure factor, energy gap, entanglement entropy and zero temperature magnetization, are studied to understand the complete phase diagram. An interesting and potentially important feature of this model is that it can exhibit a macroscopic magnetization jump in the presence of a magnetic field; we study this using an effective Hamiltonian.