Quantum criticality of vanadium chains with strong relativistic spin-orbit interaction

Abstract

We study quantum phase transitions induced by the on-site spin-orbit interaction lambda(L.S) in a toy model of vanadium chains. In the lambda->0 limit, the decoupled spin and orbital sectors are described by a Haldane and an Ising chain, respectively. The gapped ground state is composed of a ferro-orbital order and a spin liquid with finite correlation lengths. In the opposite limit, strong spin-orbital entanglement results in a simultaneous spin and orbital-moment ordering, which can be viewed as an orbital liquid. Using a combination of analytical arguments and density-matrix renormalization group calculation, we show that an intermediate phase, where the ferro-orbital state is accompanied by a spin Neel order, is bounded on both sides by Ising transition lines. Implications for vanadium compounds CaV2O4 and ZnV2O4 are also discussed.

5 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (12)

• SU(4) Theory for Spin Systems with Orbital Degeneracy
• Ground State Phase Diagram of S=1 XXZ Chains with Uniaxial Single-Ion-Type Anisotropy
• Structural, orbital, and magnetic order in vanadium spinels
• Orbital and spin chains in ZnV2O4
• Magnetic transition and orbital degrees of freedom in vanadium spinels
• Phase diagram of a 1 dimensional spin-orbital model
• Orbital order in ZnV${}_2$O${}_4$
• Orbital order in vanadium spinels
• Single Crystal Growth, Crystallography, Magnetic Susceptibility, Heat Capacity, and Thermal Expansion of the Antiferromagnetic S = 1 Chain Compound CaV2O4
• Magnetic Structure and Interactions in the Quasi-1D Antiferromagnet CaV${}_2$O${}_4$
• Large-J approach to strongly coupled spin-orbital systems
• Model for frustrated spin-orbital chains: application to CaV2O4

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Fingerprints of spin-orbital entanglement in transition metal oxides
• Orbital multicriticality in spin gapped quasi-1D antiferromagnets
• Quantum entanglement in the one-dimensional spin-orbital SU(2)$\otimes XXZ$ model
• Orbital- and spin-driven lattice instabilities in quasi-one-dimensional CaV${}_2$O${}_4$
• Quantum phase transitions in a strongly entangled spin-orbital chain: A field-theoretical approach