arXiv subjects

D. C. Cabra

Publications and source records attributed to D. C. Cabra.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2014

Diagnosing order by disorder in quantum spin systems

In this paper we study the frustrated J1-J2 quantum Heisenberg model on the square lattice for J2 > 2J1, in a magnetic field. In this regime the classical system is known to have a degenerate manifold of lowest energy configurations, where standard thermal order by disorder occurs. In order to study its quantum version we use a path integral formulation in terms of coherent states. We show that the classical degeneracy in the plane transverse to the magnetic field is lifted by quantum fluctuations. Collinear states are then selected, in a similar pattern to that set by thermal order by disorder, leaving a Z2 degeneracy. A careful analysis reveals a purely quantum mechanical effect given by the tunneling between the two minima selected by fluctuations. The effective description contains two planar (XY -like) fields conjugate to the total magnetization and the difference of the two sublattice magnetizations. Disorder in either or both of these fields produces the locking of their conjugate observables. Furthermore, within this scenario we argue that the quantum state is close to a product state.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Spin-phonon induced magnetic order in Kagome ice

We study the effects of lattice deformations on the Kagome spin ice, with Ising spins coupled by nearest neighbor exchange and long range dipolar interactions, in the presence of in-plane magnetic fields. We describe the lattice energy according to the Einstein model, where each site distortion is treated independently. Upon integration of lattice degrees of freedom, effective quadratic spin interactions arise. Classical MonteCarlo simulations are performed on the resulting model, retaining up to third neighbor interactions, under different directions of the magnetic field. We find that, as the effect of the deformation is increased, a rich plateau structure appears in the magnetization curves.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Low energy electron-phonon effective action from symmetry analysis

Based on a detailed symmetry analysis, we state the general rules to build up the effective low energy field theory describing a system of electrons weakly interacting with the lattice degrees of freedom. The basic elements in our construction are what we call the "memory tensors", that keep track of the microscopic discrete symmetries into the coarse-grained action. The present approach can be applied to lattice systems in arbitrary dimensions and in a systematic way to any desired order in derivatives. We apply the method to the honeycomb lattice and re-obtain the by now well-known effective action of Dirac fermions coupled to fictitious gauge fields. As a second example, we derive the effective action for electrons in the kagomé lattice, where our approach allows to obtain in a simple way the low energy electron-phonon coupling terms.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Fermi surface instabilities at finite Temperature

We present a new method to detect Fermi surface instabilities for interacting systems at finite temperature. We first apply it to a list of cases studied previously, recovering already known results in a very economic way, and obtaining most of the information on the phase diagram analytically. As an example, in the continuum limit we obtain the critical temperature as an implicit function of the magnetic field and the chemical potential $T_c(μ,h)$. By applying the method to a model proposed to describe reentrant behavior in $Sr_3Ru_2O_7$, we reproduce the phase diagram obtained experimentally and show the presence of a non-Fermi Liquid region at temperatures above the nematic phase.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Broken discrete symmetries in a frustrated honeycomb antiferromagnet

We study the magnetic phase diagram of the $J_1$--$J_2$ Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a honeycomb lattice at the strongly frustrated point $J_2/J_1=1/2$ using large-scale Monte Carlo simulations. At low temperatures we find three different field regimes, each characterized by different broken discrete symmetries. In low magnetic fields up to $h_{c1}/J_1\approx 2.9$ the $Z_3$ rotational lattice symmetry is spontaneously broken while a 1/2-magnetization plateau is stabilized around $h_{c2}/J_1=4$. The collinear plateau state and the coplanar state in higher fields break the $Z_4$ translational symmetry and correspond to triple-$q$ magnetic structures. The intermediate phase $h_{c1}<h<h_{c2}$ has an interesting symmetry structure, breaking simultaneously the $Z_3$ and $Z_4$ symmetries. At much lower temperatures the spatial broken discrete symmetries coexist with the quasi long-range order of the transverse spin components.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Statistical transmutation in doped quantum dimer models

We prove a "statistical transmutation" symmetry of doped quantum dimer models on the square, triangular and kagome lattices: the energy spectrum is invariant under a simultaneous change of statistics (i.e. bosonic into fermionic or vice-versa) of the holes and of the signs of all the dimer resonance loops. This exact transformation enables to define duality equivalence between doped quantum dimer Hamiltonians, and provides the analytic framework to analyze dynamical statistical transmutations. We investigate numerically the doping of the triangular quantum dimer model, with special focus on the topological Z2 dimer liquid. Doping leads to four (instead of two for the square lattice) inequivalent families of Hamiltonians. Competition between phase separation, superfluidity, supersolidity and fermionic phases is investigated in the four families.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Reentrant behaviour in Landau Fermi liquids with spin-split Pomeranchuk instabilities

We study the effects of spin-antisymmetric interactions on the stability of a Landau-Fermi liquid on the square lattice, using the generalized Pomeranchuk method for two-dimensional lattice systems. In particular, we analyze interactions that could induce instabilities of the so called spin-split type, that is when spin-up and spin-down Fermi surfaces are displaced with respect to each other. The phase space is studied as a function of the strength of the interaction $V$, the electron chemical potential $μ$ and an external magnetic field $h$. We find that such interactions produce in general an enhancement of the instability region of the Landau-Fermi liquid. More interestingly, in certain regions of the $V$-$μ$ phase space, we find a reentrant behaviour as a function of the magnetic field $h$, similar to that found in recent experiments, e.g. in URu$_2$Si$_2$ and Sr$_3$Ru$_2$O$_7$.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Ferromagnetic frustrated spin systems on the square lattice: a Schwinger boson study

We study a ferromagnetic Heisenberg spin system on the square lattice, with nearest neighbors interaction J_1 frustrated by second J_2 and third J_3 neighbors antiferromagnetic interactions, using a mean field theory for the Schwinger boson representation of spins. For J_3=0 we find that the boundary between the ferromagnetic and the collinear classical phases shifts to smaller values of J_2 when quantum fluctuations are included. Along the line J_2/|J_1|= 1 the boundaries between the collinear and incommensurate regions are strongly shifted to larger values with respect to the classical case. We do not find clear evidence for spin gapped phases within the present approximation.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Order by disorder and phase transitions in a highly frustrated spin model on the triangular lattice

Frustration has proved to give rise to an extremely rich phenomenology in both quantum and classical systems. The leading behavior of the system can often be described by an effective model, where only the lowest-energy degrees of freedom are considered. In this paper we study a system corresponding to the strong trimerization limit of the spin 1/2 kagome antiferromagnet in a magnetic field. It has been suggested that this system can be realized experimentally by a gas of spinless fermions in an optical kagome lattice at 2/3 filling. We investigate the low-energy behavior of both the spin 1/2 quantum version and the classical limit of this system by applying various techniques. We study in parallel both signs of the coupling constant J since the two cases display qualitative differences. One of the main peculiarities of the J>0 case is that, at the classical level, there is an exponentially large manifold of lowest-energy configurations. This renders the thermodynamics of the system quite exotic and interesting in this case. For both cases, J>0 and J<0, a finite-temperature phase transition with a breaking of the discrete dihedral symmetry group D_6 of the model is present. For J<0, we find a transition temperature T^<_c/|J| = 1.566 +/- 0.005, i.e., of order unity, as expected. We then analyze the nature of the transition in this case. While we find no evidence for a discontinuous transition, the interpretation as a continuous phase transition yields very unusual critical exponents violating the hyperscaling relation. By contrast, in the case J>0 the transition occurs at an extremely low temperature, T^>_c ~= 0.0125 J. Presumably this low transition temperature is connected with the fact that the low-temperature ordered state of the system is established by an order-by-disorder mechanism in this case.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Pomeranchuk instabilities in multicomponent lattice systems at finite Temperature

In the present paper we extend the method to detect Pomeranchuk instabilities in lattice systems developed in previous works to study more general situations. The main result presented here is the extension of the method to include finite temperature effects, which allows to compute critical temperatures as a function of interaction strengths and density of carriers. Furthermore, it can be applied to multiband problems which would be relevant to study systems with spin/color degrees of freedom. Altogether, the present extended version provides a potentially powerful technique to investigate microscopic realistic models relevant to e.g. the Fermi liquid to nematic transition extensively studied in connection with different materials such as cuprates, ruthenates, etc.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Anharmonic effects in magnetoelastic chains

We describe a new mechanism leading to the formation of rational magnetization plateau phases, which is mainly due to the anharmonic spin-phonon coupling. This anharmonicity produces plateaux in the magnetization curve at unexpected values of the magnetization without explicit magnetic frustration in the Hamiltonian and without an explicit breaking of the translational symmetry. These plateau phases are accompanied by magneto-elastic deformations which are not present in the harmonic case.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Evidence of a spin liquid phase in the frustrated honeycomb lattice

In the present paper we present some new data supporting the existence of a spin-disordered phase in the Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice with antiferromagnetic interactions up to third neighbors along the line J2=J3, predicted in [Phys. Rev. B 83, 094506 (2011)]. We use the Schwinger boson technique followed by a mean field decoupling and exact diagonalization for small systems to show the existence of an intermediate phase with a spin gap and short range Néel correlations in the strong quantum limit (S=1/2).

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Quantum disordered phase on the frustrated honeycomb lattice

In the present paper we study the phase diagram of the Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice with antiferromagnetic interactions up to third neighbors along the line $J_2=J_3$ that include the point $J_2=J_3=J_1/2$, corresponding to the highly frustrated point where the classical ground state has macroscopic degeneracy. Using the Linear Spin-Wave, Schwinger boson technique followed by a mean field decoupling and exact diagonalization for small systems we find an intermediate phase with a spin gap and short range Néel correlations in the strong quantum limit (S=1/2). All techniques provide consistent results which allow us to predict the existence of a quantum disordered phase, which may have been observed in recent high-field ESR measurements in manganites.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2009

Coexisting orders in the quarter-filled Hubbard chain with elastic deformations

The electronic properties of the quarter-filled extended Peierls-Holstein-Hubbard model that includes lattice distortions and molecular deformations are investigated theoretically using the bosonization approach. We predict the existence of a wide variety of charge-elastic phases depending of the values of the Peierls and Holstein couplings. We include the effect of the Peierls deformation in the nearest-neighbor repulsion V, that may be present in real materials where Coulomb interactions depend strongly on the distance, and we show that the phase diagram changes substantially for large V when this term is taken into account.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2009

Magnetization Process of the Classical Heisenberg Model on the Shastry-Sutherland Lattice

We investigate classical Heisenberg spins on the Shastry-Sutherland lattice and under an external magnetic field. A detailed study is carried out both analytically and numerically by means of classical Monte-Carlo simulations. Magnetization pseudo-plateaux are observed around 1/3 of the saturation magnetization for a range of values of the magnetic couplings. We show that the existence of the pseudo-plateau is due to an entropic selection of a particular collinear state. A phase diagram that shows the domains of existence of those pseudo-plateaux in the $(h, T)$ plane is obtained.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2009

Magnetization plateaux in the classical Shastry-Sutherland lattice

We investigated the classical Shastry-Sutherland lattice under an external magnetic field in order to understand the recently discovered magnetization plateaux in the rare-earth tetraborides compounds RB$_4$. A detailed study of the role of thermal fluctuations was carried out by mean of classical spin waves theory and Monte-Carlo simulations. Magnetization quasi-plateaux were observed at 1/3 of the saturation magnetization at non zero temperature. We showed that the existence of these quasi-plateaux is due to an entropic selection of a particular collinear state. We also obtained a phase diagram that shows the domains of existence of different spin configurations in the magnetic field versus temperature plane.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2009

Comparison between disordered quantum spin 1/2 chains

We study the magnetic properties of two types of one dimensional XX spin 1/2 chains. The first type has only nearest neighbor interactions which can be either antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic and the second type which has both nearest neighbor and next nearest neighbor interactions, but only antiferromagnetic in character. We study these systems in the presence of low transverse magnetic fields both analytically and numerically. Comparison of results show a close relation between the two systems, which is in agreement with results previously found in Heisenberg chains by means of a numerical real space renormalization group procedure.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2008

Generalized Pomeranchuk instabilities in graphene

We study the presence of Pomeranchuk instabilities induced by interactions on a Fermi liquid description of a graphene layer. Using a recently developed generalization of Pomeranchuk method we present a phase diagram in the space of fillings versus on-site and nearest neighbors interactions. Interestingly, we find that for both interactions being repulsive an instability region exists near the Van Hove filling, in agreement with earlier theoretical work. In contrast, near half filling, the Fermi liquid behavior appears to be stable, in agreement with theoretical results and experimental findings using ARPES. The method allows for a description of the complete phase diagram for arbitrary filling.

cond-mat.str-el↗