arXiv subjects

K. S. D. Beach

Publications and source records attributed to K. S. D. Beach.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2009

The SU(N) Heisenberg model on the square lattice: a continuous-N quantum Monte Carlo study

A quantum phase transition is typically induced by tuning an external parameter that appears as a coupling constant in the Hamiltonian. Another route is to vary the global symmetry of the system, generalizing, e.g., SU(2) to SU(N). In that case, however, the discrete nature of the control parameter prevents one from identifying and characterizing the transition. We show how this limitation can be overcome for the SU(N) Heisenberg model with the help of a singlet projector algorithm that can treat N continuously. On the square lattice, we find a direct, continuous phase transition between Neel-ordered and crystalline bond-ordered phases at Nc=4.57(5) with critical exponents z=1 and beta/nu=0.81(3).

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2009

Bilayer Hubbard model for 3He: a cluster dynamical mean-field calculation

Inspired by recent experiments on bilayer 3He, we consider a bilayer Hubbard model on a triangular lattice. For appropriate model parameters, we observe a band-selective Mott transition at a critical chemical potential, mu_c, corresponding to the solidification of the fermions in the first layer. The growth of the effective mass on the metallic side (mu < mu_c) is cut off by a first order transition in which the first layer fermions drop out of the Luttinger volume and their spin degrees of freedom become locked in a spin singlet state. These results are obtained from a cluster dynamical mean-field calculation on an eight-site cluster with a quantum Monte Carlo cluster solver.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2008

Mean Field study of the heavy fermion metamagnetic transition

We investigate the evolution of the heavy fermion ground state under application of a strong external magnetic field. We present a richer version of the usual hybridization mean field theory that allows for hybridization in both the singlet and triplet channels and incorporates a self-consistent Weiss field. We show that for a magnetic field strength B*, a filling-dependent fraction of the zero-field hybridization gap, the spin up quasiparticle band becomes fully polarized--an event marked by a sudden jump in the magnetic susceptibility. The system exhibits a kind of quantum rigidity in which the susceptibility (and several other physical observables) are insensitive to further increases in field strength. This behavior ends abruptly with the collapse of the hybridization order parameter in a first-order transition to the normal metallic state. We argue that the feature at B* corresponds to the "metamagnetic transition" in YbRh2Si2. Our results are in good agreement with recent experimental measurements.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2008

Coherence and metamagnetism in the two-dimensional Kondo lattice model

We report the results of dynamical mean field calculations for the metallic Kondo lattice model subject to an applied magnetic field. High-quality spectral functions reveal that the picture of rigid, hybridized bands, Zeeman-shifted in proportion to the field strength, is qualitatively correct. We find evidence of a zero-temperature magnetization plateau, whose onset coincides with the chemical potential entering the spin up hybridization gap. The plateau appears at the field scale predicted by (static) large-N mean field theory and has a magnetization value consistent with that of x=1-n_c spin-polarized heavy holes, where n_c < 1 is the conduction band filling of the noninteracting system. We argue that the emergence of the plateau at low temperature marks the onset of quasiparticle coherence.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2008

Comment on "Quantum Monte Carlo scheme for frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnets"

Quantum Monte Carlo methods are sophisticated numerical techniques for simulating interacting quantum systems. In some cases, however, they suffer from the notorious "sign problem" and become too inefficient to be useful. A recent publication [J. Wojtkiewicz, Phys. Rev. B 75, 174421 (2007)] claims to have solved the sign problem for a certain class of frustrated quantum spin systems through the use of a bipartite valence bond basis. We show in this Comment that the apparent positivity of the path integral is due to a misconception about the resolution of the identity operator in this basis, and that consequently the sign problem remains a severe obstacle for the simulation of frustrated quantum magnets.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2007

Valence bond description of the long-range, nonfrustrated Heisenberg chain

The Heisenberg chain with antiferromagnetic, powerlaw exchange has a quantum phase transition separating spin liquid and Neel ordered phases at a critical value of the powerlaw exponent alpha. The behaviour of the system can be explained rather simply in terms of a resonating valence bond state in which the amplitude for a bond of length r goes as r^{-alpha} for alpha < 1, as r^{-(1+alpha)/2} for 1 < alpha < 3, and as r^{-2} for alpha > 3. Numerical evaluation of the staggered magnetic moment and Binder cumulant reveals a second order transition at alpha_c = 2.18(5), in excellent agreement with quantum Monte Carlo. The divergence of the magnetic correlation length is consistent with an exponent nu = 2/(3-alpha_c) = 2.4(2).

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2007

Master equation approach to computing RVB bond amplitudes

We describe a "master equation" analysis for the bond amplitudes h(r) of an RVB wavefunction. Starting from any initial guess, h(r) evolves (in a manner dictated by the spin hamiltonian under consideration) toward a steady-state distribution representing an approximation to the true ground state. Unknown transition coefficients in the master equation are treated as variational parameters. We illustrate the method by applying it to the J1-J2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model. Without frustration (J2=0), the amplitudes are radially symmetric and fall off as 1/r^3 in the bond length. As the frustration increases, there are precursor signs of columnar or plaquette VBS order: the bonds preferentially align along the axes of the square lattice and weight accrues in the nearest-neighbour bond amplitudes. The Marshall sign rule holds over a large range of couplings, J2/J1 < 0.418. It fails when the r=(2,1) bond amplitude first goes negative, a point also marked by a cusp in the ground state energy. A nonrigourous extrapolation of the staggered magnetic moment (through this point of nonanalyticity) shows it vanishing continuously at a critical value J2/J1 = 0.447. This may be preempted by a first-order transition to a state of broken translational symmetry.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2007

Fractal valence bond loops in a long-range Heisenberg model at criticality

We present a valence bond theory of the spin-S quantum Heisenberg model. For nonfrustracting, local exchange and dimension d > 1, it predicts a resonating ground state with bond amplitudes h(r) ~ (a^2+r^2)^(-p/2) and decay exponent p=d+1. Different values of p can be achieved by introducing frustrating (p > d+1) or nonfrustrating (p < d+1) long-range interactions. For d=2, but not d=3, there is a critical value of the decay exponent p_c above which the ground state is a spin liquid. The phase transition is analogous to quantum percolation, with fractal valence bond loops playing the role of percolating clusters. The critical exponents are continuously tunable along the phase boundary p=p_c(a,S).

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2007

Monte Carlo Simulations of Quantum Spin Systems in the Valence Bond Basis

We discuss a projector Monte Carlo method for quantum spin models formulated in the valence bond basis, using the S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet as an example. Its singlet ground state can be projected out of an arbitrary basis state as the trial state, but a more rapid convergence can be obtained using a good variational state. As an alternative to first carrying out a time consuming variational Monte Carlo calculation, we show that a very good trial state can be generated in an iterative fashion in the course of the simulation itself. We also show how the properties of the valence bond basis enable calculations of quantities that are difficult to obtain with the standard basis of Sz eigenstates. In particular, we discuss quantities involving finite-momentum states in the triplet sector, such as the dispersion relation and the spectral weight of the lowest triplet.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2006

Valence bond solid phases in a cubic antiferromagnet

We report on a valence bond projector Monte Carlo simulation of the cubic lattice quantum Heisenberg model with additional higher-order exchange interactions in each unit cell. The model supports two different valence bond solid ground states. In one of these states, the dimer pattern is a three-dimensional analogue of the columnar pattern familiar from two dimensions. In the other, the dimers are regularly arranged along the four main diagonals in 1/8 of the unit cells. The phases are separated from one other and from a Neel phase by strongly first order boundaries. Our results strengthen the case for exotic transitions in two dimensions, where no discontinuities have been detected at the Heisenberg Neel-VBS transition driven by four-spin plaquet interactions.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2006

Some formal results for the valence bond basis

In a system with an even number of SU(2) spins, there is an overcomplete set of states--consisting of all possible pairings of the spins into valence bonds--that spans the S=0 Hilbert subspace. Operator expectation values in this basis are related to the properties of the closed loops that are formed by the overlap of valence bond states. We construct a generating function for spin correlation functions of arbitrary order and show that all nonvanishing contributions arise from configurations that are topologically irreducible. We derive explicit formulas for the correlation functions at second, fourth, and sixth order. We then extend the valence bond basis to include triplet bonds and discuss how to compute properties that are related to operators acting outside the singlet sector. These results are relevant to analytical calculations and to numerical valence bond simulations using quantum Monte Carlo, variational wavefunctions, or exact diagonalization.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2006

Heavy fermion fluid in high magnetic fields: an infrared study of CeRu$_4$Sb$_{12}$

We report a comprehensive infrared magneto-spectroscopy study of CeRu$_4$Sb$_{12}$ compound revealing quasiparticles with heavy effective mass m$^*$, with a detailed analysis of optical constants in fields up to 17 T. We find that the applied magnetic field strongly affects the low energy excitations in the system. In particular, the magnitude of m$^*$ $\simeq$ 70 m$_b$ (m$_b$ is the quasiparticle band mass) at 10 K is suppressed by as much as 25 % at 17 T. This effect is in quantitative agreement with the mean-field solution of the periodic Anderson model augmented with a Zeeman term.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2005

Ground state properties of a Zeeman-split heavy metal

A Zeeman field affects the metallic heavy fermion ground state in two ways: (i) it splits the spin-degerenate conduction sea, leaving spin up and spin down Fermi surfaces with different band curvature; (ii) it competes with the Kondo effect and thus suppresses the mass enhancement. Taking these two effects into account, we compute the quasiparticle effective mass as a function of applied field strength within hybridization mean field theory. We also derive an expression for the optical conductivity, which is relevant to infrared spectroscopy measurements.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2005

High-precision finite-size scaling analysis of the quantum-critical point of S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic bilayers

We use quantum Monte Carlo (stochastic series expansion) and finite-size scaling to study the quantum critical points of two S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnets in two dimensions: a bilayer and a Kondo-lattice-like system (incomplete bilayer), each with intra- and inter-plane couplings J and J_perp. We discuss the ground-state finite-size scaling properties of three different quantities--the Binder moment ratio, the spin stiffness, and the long-wavelength magnetic susceptibility--which we use to extract the critical value of the coupling ratio g=J_perp/J. The individual estimates of g_c are consistent provided that subleading finite-size corrections are properly taken into account. In the case of the complete bilayer, the Binder ratio leads to the most precise estimate of the critical coupling, although the subleading finite-size corrections to the stiffness are considerably smaller. For the incomplete bilayer, the subleading corrections to the stiffness are extremely small, and this quantity then gives the best estimate of the critical point. Contrary to predictions, we do not find a universal prefactor of the 1/L spin stiffness scaling at the critical point, whereas the Binder ratio is consistent with a universal value. Our results for the critical coupling ratios are g_c=2.52181(3) (full bilayer) and g_c=1.38882(2) (incomplete bilayer), which represent improvements of two orders of magnitude relative to the previous best estimates. For the correlation length exponent we obtain nu = 0.7106(9), consistent with the expected 3D Heisenberg universality class.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2005

Site dilution of quantum spins in the honeycomb lattice

We discuss the effect of site dilution on both the magnetization and the density of states of quantum spins in the honeycomb lattice, described by the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin-S model. For this purpose a real-space Bogoliubov-Valatin transformation is used. In this work we show that for the S>1/2 the system can be analyzed in terms of linear spin wave theory. For spin S=1/2, however, the linear spin wave approximation breaks down. In this case, we have studied the effect of dilution on the staggered magnetization using the Stochastic Series Expansion Monte Carlo method. Two main results are to be stressed from the Monte Carlo method: (i) a better value for the staggered magnetization of the undiluted system, m=0.2677(6); (ii) a finite value of the staggered magnetization of the percolating cluster at the classical percolation threshold, showing that there is no quantum critical transition driven by dilution in the Heisenberg model. In the solution of the problem using linear the spin wave method we pay special attention to the presence of zero energy modes. Using a combination of linear spin wave analysis and the recursion method we were able to obtain the thermodynamic limit behavior of the density of states for both the square and the honeycomb lattices. We have used both the staggered magnetization and the density of states to analyze neutron scattering experiments and Neel temperature measurements on quasi-two- -dimensional honeycomb systems. Our results are in quantitative agreement with experimental results on Mn_pZn_{1-p}PS_3 and on the Ba(Ni_pMg_{1-p})_2V_2O_8.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2005

Comment on "High Precision Measurement of the Thermal Exponent for the three-dimensional XY Universality Class"

A recent paper [Burovski et al., cond-mat/0507352] reports on a new, high-accuracy simulation of the classical phi^4 model (in the three-dimensional XY universality class). The authors claim that a careful scaling analysis of their data gives nu = 0.6711(1) for the thermal critical exponent. If correct, this would neatly resolve the discrepancy between numerical simulations and experiments on 4He. There is reason, however, to doubt the accuracy of the result. A re-analysis of the data yields a significantly higher value of nu, one that is consistent with other Monte Carlo studies.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2005

Data collapse in the critical region using finite-size scaling with subleading corrections

We propose a treatment of the subleading corrections to finite-size scaling that preserves the notion of data collapse. This approach is used to extend and improve the usual Binder cumulant analysis. As a demonstration, we present results for the two- and three-dimensional classical Ising models and the two-dimensional, double-layer quantum antiferromagnet.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2004

Identifying the maximum entropy method as a special limit of stochastic analytic continuation

The maximum entropy method is shown to be a special limit of the stochastic analytic continuation method introduced by Sandvik [Phys. Rev. B 57, 10287 (1998)]. We employ a mapping between the analytic continuation problem and a system of interacting classical fields. The Hamiltonian of this system is chosen such that the determination of its ground state field configuration corresponds to an unregularized inversion of the analytic continuation input data. The regularization is effected by performing a thermal average over the field configurations at a small fictitious temperature using Monte Carlo sampling. We prove that the maximum entropy method, the currently accepted state of the art, is simply the mean field limit of this fully dynamical procedure. We also describe a technical innovation: we suggest that a parallel tempering algorithm leads to better traversal of the phase space and makes it easy to identify the critical value of the regularization temperature.

cond-mat.str-el↗