V. L. Libero | Searcharxiv

arXiv2007

Energy of bond defects in quantum spin chains obtained from local approximations and from exact diagonalization

We study the influence of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic bond defects on the ground-state energy of antiferromagnetic spin chains. In the absence of translational invariance, the energy spectrum of the full Hamiltonian is obtained numerically, by an iterative modification of the power algorithm. In parallel, approximate analytical energies are obtained from a local-bond approximation, proposed here. This approximation results in significant improvement upon the mean-field approximation, at negligible extra computational effort.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv1992

A Simple Model for Coupled Magnetic and Quadrupolar Instabilities in Uranium Heavy-Fermion Materials

We present a mean-field calculation of the phase diagram of a simple model of localized moments, in the hexagonal uranium heavy-fermion compounds. The model considers a non-Kramers quadrupolar doublet ground state magnetically coupled with a singlet excited-state, favoring in-plane van-Vleck magnetism, as has been conjectured for UPt$_3$. The Hamiltonian which defines the model is Heisenberg like in both, magnetic and quadrupolar moments. Among our main results are: (i) for zero intersite quadrupolar coupling, the magnetic order is achieved by a first order transition above a critical intersite magnetic coupling value which becomes second order at higher coupling strengths. (ii) for finite intersite quadrupolar coupling, at temperatures below a second order quadrupolar ordering transition, the minimal magnetic coupling value is increased but (a) the magnetic ordering temperature is enhanced above this value, and (b) the ordering of first and second order transitions in the phase diagram is reversed.

cond-mat↗