Finite-Temperature Phase Transition and Logarithmic Quasi-Long-Range Order in the Two-dimensional Long-range Heisenberg Model

Abstract

We investigate the two-dimensional classical Heisenberg ($N=3$) model with long-range (LR) interactions decaying as $1/r^{2+\sigma }$, focusing on the marginal case $\sigma =2$. Large-scale Monte Carlo simulations up to linear size $L=8192$ reveal a finite-temperature phase transition, in striking contrast to the short-range case where the system is asymptotically free. An adiabatic renormalization-group analysis shows that the LR interaction provides a positive contribution to the stiffness flow and gives rise to a weak continuous transition through non-topological spin-wave fluctuations. We show that the low-temperature phase exhibits a novel logarithmic quasi-long-range order (log-QLRO), with correlations decaying as $C(r)\sim (\ln r{)}^{-{\eta }_{\ell }}$ and vanishing magnetization in the strict thermodynamic limit. High-precision data confirm this picture, including the predicted identity $2\pi {\kappa }_R{\eta }_{\ell }=N-1$, with ${\kappa }_R$ the renormalized spin stiffness. The decay, with ${\eta }_{\ell }\propto T$, is slower than any power law, making the phase practically indistinguishable from true long-range order in realistic systems. Our results establish a novel log-QLRO phase and a continuous transition beyond the Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson paradigm in the two-dimensional Heisenberg model at $\sigma =2$.