Frustration and Multicriticality in the Antiferromagnetic Spin-1 Chain

Abstract

We study the spin $S=1$ Heisenberg chain, with nearest neighbor, next nearest neighbor ($\alpha$) and biquadratic ($\beta$) interactions using a combination of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG), an analytic variational matrix product state wavefunction, and non-Abelian bosonization. We study the effect of frustration ($\alpha >0$) on the Haldane phase with $-1\le \beta <1$ which reveals a rich phase diagram. For $-1<\beta <{\beta }^{\ast }$, we establish the existence of a spontaneously dimerized phase for large $\alpha >{\alpha }_c$, separated from the Haldane phase by the critical line ${\alpha }_c(\beta )$ of second-order phase transitions connected to the Takhtajan--Babudjian integrable point ${\alpha }_c(\beta =-1)=0$. In the opposite regime, $\beta >{\beta }^{\ast }$, the transition from the Haldane phase becomes first-order into the next nearest neighbor (NNN) AKLT phase. Based on field theoretical arguments and DMRG calculations, we conjecture that these two regimes are separated by a multicritical point (${\beta }^{\ast },{\alpha }^{\ast }$) of a different universality class, described by the $SU(2{)}_4$ Wess--Zumino--Witten critical theory. From the DMRG calculations we estimate this multicritical point to lie in the range $-0.2<{\beta }^{\ast }<-0.15$ and $0.47<{\alpha }^{\ast }<0.53$. We find that the dimerized and NNN-AKLT phases are separated by a line of first-order phase transitions that terminates at the multicritical point. Inside the Haldane phase, we show the existence of two incommensurate crossovers: the Lifshitz transition and the disorder transition of the first kind, marking incommensurate correlations in momentum and real space, respectively. We show these crossover lines stretch across the entire $(\beta ,\alpha )$ phase diagram, merging into a single incommensurate-to-commensurate transition line for negative $\beta \lesssim {\beta }^{\ast }$ outside the Haldane phase.

25 pages, 24 figures, updated with published version

References in corpus (5)

• The density-matrix renormalization group in the age of matrix product states
• Matrix Product States, Projected Entangled Pair States, and variational renormalization group methods for quantum spin systems
• Implementation of Spin Hamiltonians in Optical Lattices
• Spin nematic correlations in bilinear-biquadratic S=1 spin chains
• Density Matrix Renormalization Group for Dummies

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Spontaneous dimerization, critical lines, and short-range correlations in a frustrated spin-1 chain
• Comment on "Frustration and Multicriticality in the Antiferromagnetic Spin-1 Chain"
• Quantum phase transitions in a spin-1 antiferromagnetic chain with long-range interactions and modulated single-ion anisotropy
• Proposal of a spin-one chain model with competing dimer and trimer interactions
• Magnetic phase separation in a frustrated ferrimagnetic chain under a magnetic field
• Exact zero modes in frustrated Haldane chains
• Bound states and deconfined spinons in the dynamical structure factor of the $J_1-J_2$ spin-1 chain
• Emergent incommensurate correlations in the frustrated ferromagnetic spin-1 chains