Magnetic excitations of a trilayer antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model

Abstract

We investigate the squared sublattice magnetizations and magnetic excitations of a $S=1/2$ trilayer antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model with interlayer interaction $J_{\bot}$ and intralayer interaction $J_{//}$ by employing stochastic series expansion quantum Monte Carlo (SSE-QMC) and stochastic analytic continuation (SAC) methods. Compared with the bilayer model, the trilayer model has one inner layer and two outer layers. The change in its symmetry can lead to special magnetic excitations. Our study reveals that the maximum of the magnetization of the outer sublattice corresponds to smaller ratio parameter $g={J_{//}}/{J_{\bot}}$, a finding that is verified using the finite-size extrapolation. As $g$ decreases, the excitation spectra gradually evolve from a degenerate magnon mode with continua to low-energy and high-energy branches. Particularly when $g$ is small enough, like $0.02$, the high-energy spectrum further splits into characteristic doublon ($\approx J_{\bot}$) and quarton ($\approx 1.5 J_{\bot}$) spectral bands. Moreover, the accuracy of the magnetic excitations is confirmed through the SpinW software package and the dispersion relations derived through the linear spin wave theory. Our results provide an important reference for experiments, which can be directly compared with experimental data from inelastic neutron scattering results to verify and guide the accuracy of experimental detection.