We study the fate of spin-
1/2 spiral-ordered two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets that are disordered by quantum fluctuations. A crucial role is played by the topological point defects of the spiral phase, which are known to have a
Z2 character. Previous works established that a nontrivial quantum spin-liquid phase results when the spiral is disordered without proliferating the
Z2 vortices. Here, we show that when the spiral is disordered by proliferating and condensing these vortices, valence-bond solid ordering occurs due to quantum Berry phase effects. We develop a general theory for this latter phase transition and apply it to a lattice model. This transition potentially provides a new example of a Landau-forbidden deconfined quantum critical point.
We investigate the effect of the Berry phase on quadrupoles that occur, for example, in the low-energy description of spin models. Specifically, we study here the one-dimensional bilinear-biquadratic spin-one model. An open question for many years about this model is whether it has a nondimerized fluctuating nematic phase. The dimerization has recently been proposed to be related to Berry phases of the quantum fluctuations. We use an effective low-energy description to calculate the scaling of the dimerization according to this theory and then verify the predictions using large scale density-matrix renormalization group simulations, giving good evidence that the state is dimerized all the way up to its transition into the ferromagnetic phase. We furthermore discuss the multiplet structure found in the entanglement spectrum of the ground state wave functions.
Recently it was argued that quantum phase transitions can be radically different from classical phase transitions with, as a highlight, the "deconfined critical points" exhibiting fractionalization of quantum numbers due to Berry phase effects. Such transitions are supposed to occur in frustrated (" J 1 - J 2 ") quantum magnets. We have developed a novel renormalization approach for such systems which is fully respecting the underlying lattice structure. According to our findings, another profound phenomenon is around the corner: a fluctuation-induced (order-out-of-disorder) first-order transition. This has to occur for large spin and we conjecture that it is responsible for the weakly first-order behavior recently observed in numerical simulations for frustrated S = 1/2 systems.
Kitaev-type spin chains have been demonstrated to be fertile playgrounds in which exotic phases and unconventional phase transitions are ready to appear. In this work, we use the density-matrix renormalization-group method to study the quantum phase diagram of a spin-1 Kitaev chain with a tunable negative single-ion anisotropy (SIA). When the strength of the SIA is small, the ground state is revealed to be a spin-nematic phase, which escapes conventional magnetic order but is characterized by a finite spin-nematic correlation because of the breaking spin-rotational symmetry. As the SIA increases, the spin-nematic phase is taken over by either a dimerized phase or an antiferromagnetic phase through an Ising-type phase transition, depending on the direction of the easy axis. For large enough SIA, the dimerized phase and the antiferromagnetic phase undergo a ``Landau-forbidden'' continuous phase transition, suggesting new platform of deconfined quantum critical point in spin-1 Kitaev chain.
We discuss spin-
21 one-dimensional (1D) and quasi-1D magnets with competing ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor
J1 and antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor
J exchange interactions in a strong magnetic field
H. It is well known that, due to attraction between magnons, quantum phase transitions (QPTs) take place at
H=Hs from the fully polarized phase to the nematic phase if
J>∣J1∣/4. Such a transition at
J>0.368∣J1∣ is characterized by a softening of the two-magnon bound-state spectrum. Using a bond-operator formalism we propose a bosonic representation of the spin Hamiltonian containing, aside from bosons describing one-magnon spin-1 excitations, a boson describing spin-2 excitations whose spectrum coincides at $H\ensuremath{\ge}{H}_{s}$ with the two-magnon bound-state spectrum obtained before. The presence of the bosonic mode in the theory that softens at
H=Hs makes the QPT consideration substantially standard. In the 1D case at
H<Hs, we find an expression for the magnetization which well describes existing numerical data. Expressions for spin correlators are obtained which coincide with those derived before, either in the limiting case of $J\ensuremath{\gg}|{J}_{1}|$ or using a phenomenological theory. In quasi-1D magnets, we find that the boundary in the
H-
T plane between the fully polarized and the nematic phases is given by ${H}_{s}(0)\ensuremath{-}{H}_{s}(T)\ensuremath{\propto}{T}^{3/2}$. Simple expressions are obtained in the nematic phase for static spin correlators, spectra of magnons and the soft mode, magnetization, and the nematic order parameter. All static two-spin correlation functions are short ranged with the correlation length proportional to
1/ln(1+∣J1∣/J). Dynamical spin susceptibilities are discussed and it is shown that the soft mode can be observed experimentally in the longitudinal channel.
The quasi-one-dimensional S=1 Heisenberg antiferromagnet with a biquadratic term is investigated at zero temperature by quantum Monte Carlo simulation. As the magnitude of the inter-chain coupling is increased, the system undergoes a phase transition from a spontaneously dimerized phase to a Néel ordered or spin nematic phase. The numerical results suggest the possibility of an unconventional second-order transition in which the symmetry group characterizing one phase is not a subgroup of the other.