Antiferromagnetic order without recourse to staggered fields

Abstract

In the theory of antiferromagnetism, the staggered field---an external magnetic field that alternates in sign on atomic length scales---is used to select the classical Néel state from a quantum magnet, but justification is missing. This work examines, within the decoherence framework, whether repeated $local$ measurement can replace a staggered field. Accordingly, the conditions under which local decoherence can be considered a continuous measurement are studied. The dynamics of a small magnetic system is analysed to illustrate that local decoherence can lead to (symmetry-broken) order similar to order resulting from a staggered field.

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Probing the topology of the quantum analog of a classical skyrmion
• Reconstruction of classical skyrmions from Anderson towers: quantum Darwinism in action
• Fate of entanglement in magnetism under Lindbladian or non-Markovian dynamics and conditions for their transition to Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert classical dynamics
• Quantum dynamics of a small symmetry breaking measurement device