Ashkin-Teller criticality and weak-first-order behavior of phase transition to four-fold degenerate state in two-dimensional frustrated Ising antiferromagnets

R. M. Liu, W. Z. Zhuo, J. Chen +5

We study the thermal phase transitions of the four-fold degenerate phases (the plaquette and single stripe states) in two-dimensional frustrated Ising model on the Shastry-Sutherla…