Floating, critical and dimerized phases in a frustrated spin-3/2 chain

Abstract

We study spontaneous dimerization and emergent criticality in a spin-3/2 chain with antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor $J_1$, next-nearest-neighbor $J_2$ and three-site $J_3$ interactions. In the absence of three-site interaction $J_3$, we provide evidence that the model undergoes a remarkable sequence of three phase transitions as a function of $J_2/J_1$, going successively through a critical commesurate phase, a partially dimerized gapped phase, a critical floating phase with quasi-long-range incommensurate order, to end up in a fully dimerized phase at very large $J_2/J_1$. In the field theory language, this implies that the coupling constant of the marginal operator responsible for dimerization changes sign three times. For large enough $J_3$, the fully dimerized phase is stabilized for all $J_2$, and the phase transitions between the critical phases and this phase are both Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) SU(2)${}_3$ along part of the boundary and turn first order at some point due to the presence of a marginal operator in the WZW SU(2)${}_3$ model. By contrast, the transition between the two dimerized phase is always first order, and the phase transitions between the partially dimerized phase and the critical phases are Kosterlitz-Thouless. Finally, we discuss the intriguing spin-1/2 edge states that emerge in the partially dimerized phase for even chains. Unlike their counterparts in the spin-1 chain, they are not confined and disappear upon increasing $J_2$ in favour of a reorganization of the dimerization pattern.

14 pages, 23 figures

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• Realization of higher Wess-Zumino-Witten models in spin chains
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Cited by in corpus (13)

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• Extracting the Speed of Light from Matrix Product States
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• Topological Phases in Half-Integer Higher Spin $J_1$-$J_2$ Heisenberg Chains
• Critical properties of a comb lattice
• Realization of Wess-Zumino-Witten transitions with levels $k=6$ and $k=4$ in a frustrated spin-3 chain
• Competition between dimerization and vector chirality in the spin-$3/2$ $J_1$-$J_2$ Heisenberg chain with uniaxial single-ion anisotropy
• Haldane phases and phase diagrams of the S = 3/2, 1 bilinear-biquadratic Heisenberg model on the orthogonal dimer chain
• Heisenberg spin chains with additional isotropic three-site exchange interactions
• ${\mathbb{Z}}_4$ transitions in quantum loop models on a zig-zag ladder
• Excitations and dynamical structure factor of $J_1-J_2$ spin-$3/2$ and spin-$5/2$ Heisenberg spin chains
• Confinement, deconfinement, and bound states in the spin-$1$ and spin-$3/2$ generalizations of the Majumdar--Ghosh chain
• Phases and phase transitions of an $S=3/2$ chain on metallic and semi-metallic surfaces